CAPE CANAVERAL - The Mars rovers emerged from a communications blackout period and the low point of winter today with new funding and big plans for the journey ahead.
Engineers hope to put Spirit atop Husband Hill so it can get a view all the way to the edge of vast Gusev Crater, in which it landed.
"There are things I look forward to, and one of them is getting out of the crater and starting the monumental trek south," project manager Jim Erickson said. "Being able to make that happen is still cool."
Both of NASA's robotic geologists are probing the history of water on Mars. They are back in full communication today with the team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California after several days of the sun blocking communications.
"We got little snippets of data through the noise," Erickson said.
Dust collecting on the solar panels has apparently leveled off, Erickson said. Though it may get a little colder before it gets warmer, he said, "the real important factor is how much solar energy we get, and that's looking great."
Spirit's sticky wheel seems to have stabilized, he said, and its instruments appear fine. "We're so happy on Spirit, we're going to see if we can punish these things a little further," Erickson said.
Opportunity's mini-thermal emission spectrometer, which identifies the composition of rocks, so far has survived the cold. The team is keeping an eye on it because a stuck heater forced engineers to shut down the rover's electronics -- including heaters -- in "deep sleep" each night to conserve energy.
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