Snooping Around On Mars...On Top Of Husband Hill - Page 3

Pb · Aug 29th, 2007, 06:27 PM

Mars rovers march on.

"NASA's twin Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity are starting to move again after being immobilised for six weeks by severe dust storms."

"Spirit is now getting 313 watt-hours of energy per day and has already made a short drive of 42 centimetres. Over the weekend, the rover team started driving Spirit towards the top of Home Plate, a flat-topped hill thought to be the remains of a volcano that had an explosive eruption long ago."

"Dust left over from the storms is still causing some problems, however. Some dust seems to have fallen onto the lens of Spirit's microscopic imager when the imager's protective cover was opened."

"To try to remove the dust, the team has been pointing the imager directly down and opening and closing the cover, hoping that gravity would pull the dust off. Some of it does seem to have fallen off, since the image quality has improved somewhat."

http://space.newscientist.com/articl...ms-recede.html

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Aug 29th, 2007, 06:27 PM	#41 (permalink)
Pb IRC Crew Join Date: Jul 2001 Location: 404 Posts: 2,064	Mars rovers march on. "NASA's twin Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity are starting to move again after being immobilised for six weeks by severe dust storms." "Spirit is now getting 313 watt-hours of energy per day and has already made a short drive of 42 centimetres. Over the weekend, the rover team started driving Spirit towards the top of Home Plate, a flat-topped hill thought to be the remains of a volcano that had an explosive eruption long ago." "Dust left over from the storms is still causing some problems, however. Some dust seems to have fallen onto the lens of Spirit's microscopic imager when the imager's protective cover was opened." "To try to remove the dust, the team has been pointing the imager directly down and opening and closing the cover, hoping that gravity would pull the dust off. Some of it does seem to have fallen off, since the image quality has improved somewhat." http://space.newscientist.com/articl...ms-recede.html