January 30, 2004
Good morning and welcome to JPL. It's 10 am Spirit in Gusev . It's sol 27, 10am at Opportunity in Meridiani.
Mark Adler (mission manager): Sol 27 for spirit. Still working the anomaly. On sol 25 we did in fact start some normal operations. Took a front Hazcam showing arm on Adirondack. Shows we're still on Mars :D Everything right where we left it. We also got HGA working so are able to have normal HGA communications during day which is important for working on this anomaly. On sol 26 more operation with instruments. Got data from Mossbauer and APSX. Also took several color Pancam images. Show the next slide. Up at the top is the calibration target. Next is the Sun. On the bottom we have an image of Cake and Blanco. Jim Bell provided us with these color calibrated images. We also yesterday completed a scan of flash memory provided us with some important diagnostic info. Mounting flash takes more system ram than we have available. Helps confirm the theory we had that we're running out of memory when trying to mount flash. Still don't know if it's number of files or other characteristics of the contents of the flash. Today on sol 27 continue with task trace going on right now. Take some piece of memory when it's run up mode where it's not functioning normally and see if that shows trace information of what routines were running when the system got hung up. Then we'll bring system back up in cripple mode and delete from flash memory a large number of cruise phase files By doing that, it may provide enough of a change in state of the flash file system to not require as much memory to mount flash. Then we'll try to reboot into normal mode, non-cripple mode and see if the system comes up. We're hopeful that it will come up and if it does we'll resume normal operations and do some housekeeping on the system and begin to play back some of the data in the flash in preparation for a possible flash file format tomorrow. If that doesn't work we'll go back to cripple mode and get more diagnostic info and replan for tomorrow as to whether or not we want to do a format or what is the next step we want to take. Sol 28, if everything goes well, mini-TES checkout, flight software check. Sol 29 hopefully normal operations.
Daniel Limonadi (rover system engineer): Sol 6, about 10 PM at Opportunity. Good couple of days, a bit ahead of schedule. We've deleted same files that they'll be deleting on Spirit. That went well. Gave a boost to Spirit guys. Deployed rear wheels, moved rear lander petal down to get our egress path better. Retracted rear airbags and moved lander petal down. Made our egress path better. Now have a very benign egress path. Released rear wheels, that went well. Released middle wheels. Then we deployed, wiggled, and stowed IDD for drive. Tonight doing instrument checks on Mossbauer and APSX, both a functional check to make sure everything still works after the pyro fire for IDD as well as an overnight calibration. Tomorrow, sol 7, we cut the last pyro device of 60 plus devices. We will then do a small egress bump to drive forward to test mobility actuators. If all goes well, we'll egress at the end of sol 7. We're ahead of schedule. Take advantage of the fact that Opportunity treats us well, and get into a better power state, get the rover on the ground for science. We have some egress video. Preview of what is going to happen tonight. Rover roughly the attitude we have on Mars, recreated in the Issel(sp?) sandbox. 10° nosedown pitch on rover. Egress aid tips are in the dirt. Recreated anatomy of the crater. Very benign egress path. Not too worried about the egress path so we're gonna get on the ground, six wheels on the ground in Meridiani Planum.