Spirit Coordinating With Hubble

November 15, 2005

Spirit is healthy. The rover is out of restricted sols and has been making excellent progress. On sol 655, Spirit drove 94.5 meters (310 feet)! The total drive distance from sol 655 to sol 659 was 126 meters (413 feet). Spirit also took a large panoramic camera mosaic looking back at the "East Basin" for a long-baseline stereo observation. Spirit made other observations with the panoramic camera for coordinated science with the Hubble Space Telescope.

Sol-by-sol summaries:

Sol 655 (Nov. 5, 2005): Spirit drove 94.5 meters (310 feet) southeast down onto "Lower Haskin Ridge." The maximum uphill slip was 10 percent at the beginning of the drive. The maximum downhill slip was three percent.

Sol 656: Spirit performed untargeted remote sensing and began observations in coordination with Hubble Space Telescope. The observations included a sky survey, an atmospheric opacity reading, calibration target readings and a horizon survey.

Sol 657: Spirit took a targeted panoramic camera mosaic back at East Basin for the second observation of the long-baseline stereo view. Spirit also performed targeted stares with the miniature thermal emission spectrometer.

Sol 658: Spirit drove 24 meters (79 feet) at a heading of 180 degrees, with an average slip of three percent.

Sol 659: Spirit drove back 8 meters (26 feet) to an outcrop of interest for inspecting with tools on the robotic arm.

As of the end of sol 659, (Nov. 10, 2005), Spirit has driven 5,273 meters (3.28 miles).

Copyright 2005 by Space Daily, Distributed United Press International