Spirit Sol 204

TiVo thinks we're cool. The TiVo user's guide has a screen shot of TiVo being used to display digital photos, and the digital photos in the screen shot are from Dan Maas's video of the MER rovers landing and roving. I show this to everyone, including Chris Leger, who tells me he has a buddy who works for TiVo. "I bet Tim did that," he says.

We're trying to get uphill to a rock outcrop about 7m away, but it's a heck of a painful drive. We're using visual odometry to do it, which always makes things more complex. And to make matters worse, we missed the first 10 minutes of the comm pass. (The rover sends the most critical data first, so if you miss the beginning of the pass, you miss the data you wanted most.) This leaves us without the rear hazcam from the previous sol's drive -- the image that would have shown us the terrain in one of the directions we could have done the drive. It'll show up later -- two hours later -- but the forward path turns out to be safe, so the delay doesn't matter in the end.

Which is good news, since the scientists are awfully eager to reach that outcrop. So is Art, who I think just wants the credit for getting them there. "The Rover Planners better get it right," he says, "or I'm calling the number on the back of that chair." (This is a reference to the "How's My Driving?" sign. The other joke there is, of course, that that number is Art's.)

Ray expresses the science view on this drive more succinctly. "Make it work," he says.