NASA Spirit Mars Rover Peers Inside Bonneville Crater

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Spirit Status for sol 64 – Spirit Reaches the 300-Meter Mark! – posted Mar. 9, 11 am PST

Spirit completed another 29 meters (94 feet) of its drive toward the rim of “Bonneville” crater on sol 64, which ended at 11:49 p.m. PST, bringing its total odometry to 314 meters (1,030 feet) – 14 meters (45.9 feet) past the minimum mission success criterion.

Spirit began the morning with an 18-meter (59 feet) direct drive that safely maneuvered the rover through a field of rocks. Spirit then traversed 11 more meters (35 feet) using autonomous navigation and at 11:30 a.m. Mars Local Solar Time completed the drive. Spirit had some difficulty finding a way around an obstacle during the last portion of the commanded drive. That resulted in some repeated forward and backward maneuvering which left an interesting “trench” for scientists to have the rover peer into.

Spirit is climbing up a very steep part of “Bonneville” now, and ended this sol’s drive tilted at a forward pitch of about 15 degrees.

For the next sol, the plan was to have Spirit perform some mini-thermal emission spectrometer sky and ground observations before waking up to do a touch-and-go and drive again!