[Tyler]

Bored Mars Robot Turns to Star Gazing
     

For those who haven't kept up with the NASA
Mars rovers, Spirit and
Opportunity, here's the situation. Both rovers are still going but dust
accumulations on the solar panels have limited their power. To make
matters worse, Spirit
became stuck on the side of a sand dune. NASA engineers are making
elaborate efforts to
free the rover, including creating an exact simulation of the Martial
soil. In the meantime, a freak wind gust has purged most of the dust
from the robot's solar panels, giving it more power than it's had in
years. With all that extra power and no where to go, scientists decided
to try some astronomical observations. The first result is shown above, a
view of the night sky from sol 1943 (June 22 Earth time). Most of what
you see are not stars, just hot pixels. The bright streak on the left is
Canopus. To eliminate the noise and make the stars stand out, engineers
plan to combine multiple exposures on future attempts. They also hope to
capture images of Earth and Venus in the twilight sky. For more see the
detailed
story by Nancy Atkinson in Universe Today. I've included a few other
recent photos from Spirit after the break. For even more images visit the Spirit raw
image repository for over 100,000 photos from the Mars rover.
   

http://robots.net/article/2870.html