Spirit lifted by Martian winds

By Mary O’Keefe

As the Mars rovers deal with advanced age, broken appendages and memory lapses, good news comes from Jet Propulsion Laboratory: the rover named Spirit had a little power boost, thanks to a Martian wind.

Solar panels convert the Sun’s rays into power for the rovers. The more dust that covers the panels, the less power gets through. A Martian wind this month has blown away some of the dust that had accumulated on the panels, giving Spirit a very important uptick in electrical output.

That boosts Spirit’s energy by about 10%, according to John Callas, rover program manager.

“We welcome that extra energy,” Callas said.

The energy will allow Spirit to do more during the day. “We are trying to climb Home Plate,” he said.

Home Plate is a low plateau where Spirit has been parked during the winter months. Now that spring is almost over and the Martian summer is about to begin, engineers will be driving Spirit onto it.

“We want to climb up and drive across [Home Plate] south to our [new] destination,” he said.

With its extra power boost Spirit is expected to continue its quest to drive across Home Plate.

In late January, Spirit had a problem recalling its daily activity. It appeared to have thought it had driven somewhere but in actuality hadn’t moved. Callas said that a leading hypothesis to the memory loss was due to a cosmic ray event. This would explain why Spirit did not record its daily activities into a memory drive that erases when the rover shuts down.

Opportunity, Spirit’s sister rover, is rolling along on the other side of the planet.

“It is doing great,” Callas said.

He added that engineers have noticed an elevated current in Opportunity’s right front wheel that they will be watching. For now they feel it is a lubrication problem and are driving the rover backwards in an effort to correct it.

“We can’t drive as far going backwards,” he said. “It’s like backing up your car you can see [much easier] what is in front of you when you are driving forward.”

For right now engineers are taking it slow with Opportunity, and grateful for any extra Spirit power.

“We can expect some impulsive [sand storm] activities,” he said. “We will keep vigilante for dust storms but for now it has given us a good cleaning and we are happy with that.”