PASADENA, Calif. -- Software engineers here at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) have been successful in restoring Spirits ability to conduct science. Work is still underway to fully characterize the computer hiccups that the robot experienced over a week ago.

Mark Adler, JPL Mission Manager for the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) program said team members are hopeful to resume normal operations of Spirit. Part of that process is reformatting the robots flash memory.

"The seats in mission control are never cold," Adler said during a press briefing today here at JPL.

And while engineers continue to tinker with Spirits software, the rover sent back its first new science data since being crippled by computer troubles. 

On Thursday, it took and transmitted panoramic camera images at Gusev Crater, including snapshots of two light-colored rocks, nicknamed Cake and Blanco. Scientists are considering those rocks as possible targets for up-close examination after Spirit finishes examination of the rock called Adirondack over the next few days.

Bodo Bernhardt, MER Science Team Member from the University of Mainz, Germany, proudly displayed the first spectrum ever taken of a rock on another planet.

The data was accumulated prior to the rovers computer problems using the German-provided Mssbauer spectrometer. Twelve hours and twenty-nine minutes of data was collected in studying the martian rock nicknamed Adirondack, Bernhardt told SPACE.com .

"There is no doubt what we see here," Bernhardt said.

Dick Morris, MER Science Team member from the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas said the mineral makeup of Adirondack include olivine, pyroxene and magnetite. That composition is common in volcanic basalt rocks on Earth.

"On Earth, olivine-bearing basalt is one of the most common kinds of rock that we find," Morris said. On Mars, what that type of rock will tell or not explain about the history of Gusev Crater remains to be seen.

Spirit also returned microscopic images of the football-sized rock.

Ray Arvidson, MER Deputy Principal Investigator from Washington University in St. Louis said those images suggest Adirondack is a hard, very fine-grain crystalline rock.

"If you were a geologist on Marsand had a hammer and whacked that rock, it would ring," Arvidson explained.

Given Spirits overall health, scientists want to pick up where they left off due to onboard software glitches. Theyll use the robots Rock Abrasion Tool the RAT -- to grind the weathered surface off of a small area on Adirondack and inspect its interior with microscope and spectrometers. 

"Theres a lot of unfinished business with Adirondack," JPLs Adler told SPACE.com . "Then well start to move out."

Later plans include the rover wheeling toward a crater now tagged Bonneville -- roughly 820 feet (250 meters) away.

Once at Bonneville, scientists operating Spirit are prepared to search for rocks that may have been excavated from below the surface and tossed outward by the impact that dug the crater.

If Spirit can rove up to the craters rim, outcrops in the crater walls can be scanned by the robots Panoramic Camera and its Mini-Thermal Emission Spectrometer (Mini-TES), an instrument that sees infrared radiation emitted by objects.

Spirit would then "turn and head for the hills" to the southeast, Arvidson said. "We may not get there, but well get more and more high-resolution views with the Panoramic Camera and the Mini-TES in terms of trying to understand the mineralogy," he said.

"I think the science for spirit is just beginning," Arvidson concluded.

Mars Rovers: Complete Coverage

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