Daily Updates - March 14, 2004
Spirit Status at end of sol 69

During its 69th sol on Mars, ending at 3:07 a.m. Sunday, PST, NASA's Spirit finished shooting frames with its panoramic camera for a full 360-degree color view of the surroundings visible from the crater rim where the rover is perched. Once the panorama frames are transmitted to Earth, scientists will use them and information from Spirit's miniature thermal emission spectrometer to assess the structures and composition of the crater interior and other surfaces in view.

Spirit did not move from its vantage point on the south rim of the crater nicknamed "Bonneville." An extra downlink session was added via relay by NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter to accelerate getting the panoramic imaging data to Earth. The total amount of data received from Spirit during the sol through relays and direct-to-Earth transmission was 225 megabits.

In the martian afternoon, Spirit added a set of observations with the miniature thermal emission spectrometer in coordination with overhead passage of NASA's Mars Global Surveyor orbiter, which carries a similar spectrometer looking down. Events of the sol also included two camera sessions requested by engineers. The first was to get high-resolution images of Spirit's heat shield on the northern rim of "Bonneville." The other was to photograph wheel tracks to help rover mobility specialists assess slippage. For sol 69's wake-up music, the team spun John Lennon's "Watching the Wheels."

Plans for sol 70, ending at 3:47 a.m. Monday, PST, feature more remote sensing from the rover's current location, before a drive along the rim begins on sol 71.

Spirit Daily Update Archive