NASA Mars Rover Spirit: Biding Time sol 1594-1600, June 27-July 03, 2008

Spirit continues to ride out the Martian winter by doing minimal activities to conserve power. The rover conducts very light science activities every three to four Martian days, or sols, and relays data to NASA’s Odyssey orbiter for transmission to Earth every 4 sols. The rest of the time, Spirit mostly sleeps.

As it has been some time since Spirit’s operators were able to synchronize the spacecraft clock to Earth time, they wished to determine how far the spacecraft clock had drifted (how much it had changed over time). Synchronization of the clock is a process that requires a power-intensive, two-way, X-band communications link. When the power situation allowed it, they decided to perform an X-band “beep” (a five-minute, low-gain communication session) to estimate the amount of drift. The transmission of plans to do so on sol 1594 (June 27, 2008) were not detected by the ground station. Engineers hoped to make another attempt on sol 1604 (July 7, 2008).

Spirit is healthy and all subsystems were performing as expected as of the Odyssey downlink on sol 1598 (July 1, 2008). Solar-array energy has been steady within the range of 225 watt-hours to 230 watt-hours (100 watt-hours is the amount of energy needed to light a 100-watt bulb for one hour).

Sol-by-sol summary

During the past week, Spirit completed the following activities:

Sol 1594 (June 27, 2008): Plans called for Spirit to perform a five-minute “beep” at X-band frequencies after relaying data to Earth via the Odyssey orbiter.

Sol 1595: Spirit recharged the battery and measured atmospheric dust opacity, known as Tau, using the panoramic camera.

Sol 1596: Spirit recharged the battery and measured atmospheric dust opacity with the panoramic camera.

Sol 1597: Spirit recharged the battery and measured atmospheric dust opacity with the panoramic camera.

Sol 1598: Spirit received new instructions from Earth via the rover’s high-gain, X-band antenna and relayed data to Odyssey at UHF frequencies for transmission of the latest Martian data to Earth. The rover measured atmospheric darkness caused by suspended dust particles with the panoramic camera.

Sol 1599: Spirit conducted light remote sensing.

Sol 1600 (July 3, 2008): Spirit recharged the battery and again measured atmospheric dust with the panoramic camera.

Odometry:

As of sol 1598 (July 1, 2008), Spirit’s total odometry remained at 7,528.0 meters (4.7 miles).