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Opportunity is in a Small Crater

By Fraser Cain - January 26, 2004 05:05 AM UTC | Planetary Science
NASA's Opportunity rover landed in an incredibly lucky spot on Sunday morning; inside a small impact crater, and very near a larger crater. The crater is only 20 metres across, but the first photos sent back by the rover show that there is exposed bedrock on one wall of the crater. Scientists have already got a preliminary journey for Opportunity planned, which involves examining the exposed rock and then traveling to the larger crater. Opportunity still needs to spend a week, maybe even two, on the lander before controllers feel comfortable rolling it out onto the Martian soil.
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Engineers Restore Communications With Spirit

By Fraser Cain - January 25, 2004 05:29 AM UTC | Missions
NASA engineers think they've got a way to communicate reliably with Spirit after it stopped responding normally last week. They believe the glitch - which caused the rover to reboot more than 100 times, transmit gibberish, and stay awake at night - was caused by a problem with its 256 MB flash memory (similar to what you might have in your digital camera). Until they can come up with a solution, they will wake the rover each morning in a way that stops it from using this troublesome component. For now, it's stable and open to new commands.
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