Planetary Society MER Update: Spirit Homes in on Winter Site as Opportunity Examines Victoria's Ring, October 31
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The Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) logged another major milestone in October as they completed a second Martian year of field geology and now may rove on through 2009.
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The fallout from the big summer storm has continued to rain dust on both rovers' solar arrays. While Spirit did benefit from a small gust of wind this month, the rover's average energy levels of about 345 watt-hours are about half of Opportunity's current 600+ watt-hours. Always the "lucky" rover, Opportunity has been reinvigorated on numerous occasions in the last two months as Martian winds have blown in and around Victoria, effectively clearing off much of the accumulated dust on its arrays and giving it considerable boosts in energy. With the fallout continuing -- and Spirit's non-functioning right front wheel inhibiting its pace -- finding a winter haven became suddenly urgent in October.
[...T]he team made its decision. Spirit will head north across Home Plate, drive a little way down the north facing edge, and winter there.
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There was an extended bit about the University of Guelph results of bound water measurements, how and what:
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“Finding [such] samples with the rovers in an otherwise dry and arid environment helps us to understand what happened to the water in the Martian past," added Gellert, who noted the team plans to conduct more analyses from the rovers' APXS data.
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Opportunity's progress in Victoria was described.
Health issues: the residual dust has bothered both Mini-TES instruments.
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Until recent weeks, all instruments on both rovers had been operating. In October, however, the Mini-TES on both Spirit and on Opportunity were turned off. "It's been getting progressively more difficult for the team to get the spectral features in the data coming down from the instrument on Spirit," said Banerdt. "We think perhaps it's getting dust in its optics, so we've stopped using it for now and closed up optics. The Mini-TES on Opportunity hasn't been giving any useable data at all since the beginning of the dust storm and so it's now in hibernation as well [...]
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There was much more on detailed activities of Spirit at Home Plate and Opportunity inside Victoria Crater.