NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers - Spirit and Opportunity - are entering new phases of work on the Red Planet.
At its Gusev Crater site, Spirit has studied a flaky rock called Mimi. Scientists have found Mimi of particular interest as its layers are suggestive of a process that might have involved the action of water. Mimi looks very different from any rock that scientists have seen at the Gusev crater site so far.
Spirit had a "smell the roses day," said Jim Erickson, Mission Manager for the Mars rover program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif.
Erickson said the robot performed remote sensing and close-up science on drift material. This sandy deposit is being characterized, he said, before the robot continues its long-distance hike toward a large feature at Gusev: Bonneville CraterRover controllers at JPL are keen on getting Spirit to Bonneville Crater, a large impact hole in the martian landscape that may well help unlock the history of the Gusev Crater region.
Fancy wheelwork
The six-wheeled Spirit is currently spurting along at 79 feet (24 meters) per day when it's on the prowl. The plan is to gradually increase the robot's range to 98 feet (30 meters) each driving day, Erickson said today during a telephone press briefing.
What Spirit will do once at Bonneville Crater is being debated by science teams, Erickson told SPACE.com. "What they do first is up for grabs."
One idea is to conduct a little fancy wheelwork, with the rover finding an easy access route to drive down inside the crater. But that depends on up-close inspection of Bonneville, with scientists reacting to whatever shows up at the time, Erickson explained.
Hard labor
Meanwhile, on the other side of Mars within the Meridiani Planum region, the Opportunity rover - sitting within a small crater -- is gearing up for hard labor: excavating a trench in the martian surface on Monday.
By using one of its two front wheels, Opportunity will gouge out a shallow hole in a hematite-rich zone in the crater. Hematite is a type of iron oxide mineral that typically, but not always, forms in association with water.
The real-estate that Opportunity will trench has been nicknamed "Hematite Slope," Erickson said.
Robot tells Earth where to go
Preparations for the rover's trenching were delayed Friday. A software glitch confounded Opportunity when stowing its robotic arm - the Instrument Deployment Device, or IDD.
Opportunity actually countermanded orders from Earth.
The rover told itself not to position the joints of its robot arm as commanded to do from the ground. "The rover is sometimes smarter than we are," Erickson said.
"The trick is to catch these on the ground and sequence them correctly before you send them up to the vehicle. We're getting better and better at thatand apparently we need to make at least one more small change, which we are in the process of doing."
This class of problem should be preventable in the future, Erickson said.
Crawl out of the crater
Once Opportunity has done its trenching assignment, and any other remaining work tasks, the robot will wheel up and out of the crater onto the expansive Meridiani Planum site.
When Opportunity will start its crawl out of the crater has yet to be determined.
"Once we leave the crater, we're not coming back. We're going to go as far as we canand see if we can get to some of the other craters nearby," Erickson said.
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