Daily Updates - May 3, 2004
Spirit Status at end of sol 114 - 117

On Sol 114, which ended at 9:49 a.m. April 29 PDT, Spirit performed a lot of science activities in the trench called "Big Hole" using the microscopic imager, Moessbauer spectrometer and alpha particle X-ray spectrometer. Opportunity also studied the rover tracks and the crater rim.

Sol 116 started with a repeat of the microscopic imaging of a target in the trench due to minor communication glitches on sol 115. Spirit then stowed the arm, backed away from Big Hole trench, and took panoramic camera images of the trench before it continued on its trek toward the Columbia Hills. The drive on sol 116, which ended at 11:08 a.m. May 1 PDT, established a new drive record of 90.8 meters (298 feet) for Spirit!

On sol 117, which ended at 11:47 a.m. May 2, Spirit drove 37 meters (121 feet) to a small ridge, where the vehicle experienced a pitch up of 12.2 degrees. Engineers believe that the change in tilt caused the vehicle to recompute its "goodness map," which helps the rover autonomously drive over the martian terrain, and the rover declared that it was not safe to continue its drive. One good thing that came out of this is that the end-of-drive tilt positioned the solar arrays to maximize afternoon solar exposure, and the rover's battery state of charge is in good health.

Spirit Daily Update Archive