This week, the MER-A rover, Spirit, hit a milestone in Martian traversing. On her 121st Martian sol, Spirit's odometer rolled past the 1 mile mark and she is now only about 1 mile from the "Colombia Hills". From this vantage point, Spirit's latest photographs are really starting to highlight some details of the hills which were completely unresolvable from the landing site.
Opportunity had her first "deep sleep" yestersol. As you may recall from some of my earlier MER coverage, Opportunity has a broken switch which is causing a heater on the robotic arm (IDD) to stay on all of the time causing power to be wasted. As the Martian winter creeps up on the rovers, and the dust accumulates on the solar collectors, there is less power available for traversal and science work. This "deep sleep" is designed to cut pretty much all of the rover's power overnight and hopefully improve the power situation for Opportunity during the day. As winter approaches and the nights get colder, this deep and cold sleep could mean the end for some of the instruments on the rover. The most fragile, and probably first to fail from cold, is the mini-TES up on the Pancam mast.
