With 100 sols under her belt and 706.5 meters (.44 miles) on her odometer, Spirit keeps on roving toward the Columbia Hills.
Spirit began sol 100, which ended at 12:35 a.m. PDT, on April 15, 2004, by closing the doors on the alpha particle X-ray spectrometer, stowing the robotic arm and backing up from the rock called "Route 66" in preparation for an afternoon drive. Before taking off, Spirit used the miniature thermal emission spectrometer to examine a patch of Route 66's surface that had been scrubbed in a daisy-shaped mosaic of brushings by that the rock abrasion tool. In the early martian afternoon, the rover began a
64-meter (210 feet) drive, Spirit's longest one-sol drive so far. The final 24 meters (78.7 feet) of the drive were navigated with the enhanced autonomous navigation capabilities of Spirit's newly uploaded software. The new software has nearly doubled the meters-per-hour rate to 32 (105 feet-per-hour).After the traverse, Spirit completed post-drive imaging and used the miniature thermal emission spectrometer on sky and ground targets.
Sol 101, which will end at 1:14 a.m. PDT on April 16, 2004, will be a remote science and driving sol for Spirit as she continues to make her way toward the Columbia Hills.
OPPORTUNITY UPDATE: A Taxing Day at the Trench - sol 80, Apr 15, 2004
Opportunity spent sol 80, which ended at 12:55 p.m. PDT on April 15, examining the trench it dug on sol 73. The rover's microscopic imager got close-up views of the targets called "Jeff's Choice," "RipX," "Jack Russell," "Beagle Burrow" and "NewRipX" in the trench.
The navigation and panoramic cameras shot images in Opportunity's drive direction toward "Endurance Crater."
The rover's spectrometers gathered data at several of the soil targets. Atmospheric data was collected by the miniature thermal emission spectrometer and panoramic camera.
In the coming sols, Opportunity will make its way to "Fram Crater," a waypoint on the path to Endurance Crater.