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I just found this on www.space.com, seem to be having power problems. One would think that they'd spend more time here capturing more detailed images of the interesting objects in this grind rather than risking another setup. If they find something significant, then this alone would make both missions a success. Just a few hours to grab more detailed images... What would that hurt???

Ok, I'm through complaining... ;-)

February 25, 2004 02:53 pm ET

Team Wrestles with Opportunity's Battery Problem
Mission controllers for the Opportunity Mars rover are preparing new sleep orders for the robot in order to save at least some power being leached by a faulty heater.

The heater, located on Opportunity's robotic arm -- also called its Instrument Deployment Device (IDD) -- has been stuck on since the rover rolled off its landing pad in January. Opportunity is currently 32 days into its mission on Mars.

"The amount of power per day is slowly dropping due to seasonal change and dust collecting on the solar panels," said Richard Cook, a project manager of the Mars Exploration Rover program at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. The power loss from the heater is gradually becoming a significant drain on Opportunity's available resources, he added.

Project engineers are testing a deep sleep program that will shut down all of Opportunity's night process, including an alarm clock and other electronics. Once uploaded next month, the software should starve the stuck heater of power at night, cutting the energy drain by two-thirds.

Opportunity's power supply has been the recent focus of attention by mission managers after a task-full day of drilling and other studies earlier this week ate into the robot's energy reserves. The rover spent the bulk of yesterday recharging its batteries, pausing for just three hours before going back to sleep at noon Mars local time.

The rover is scheduled to complete Mössbauer spectrometer measurements of its current target, a hole cut by its Rock Abrasion Tool into the surface of the rock El Capitan, and drill at least one more hole before moving on to a new target.

Meanwhile, the Spirit rover -- Opportunity's twin on Mars -- also had a light day at its Middle Ground location in Gusev Crater. The robot moved 10 feet (3 meters) forward and took panoramic images that will be used by scientists to select science targets from among a number of interesting rocks in the area. Many of the rocks were long ago ejected from the modest-sized Bonneville Crater toward which the rover is headed.

Spirit is scheduled to make more remote sensing observations of Middle Ground tomorrow, as well as use its robot arm to look at material collected by its deck magnets.

-- Tariq Malik