Spirit Sol 1007

It's my first day back on shift after conjunction. Both rovers weathered conjunction just fine -- maybe they don't need us as much as we think they do!

During conjunction, with the sun firmly planted between our two planets, Spirit also survived crossing the sol-1000 barrier. And I managed to snag the "Now Planning Sol 1000" sheet, and got everybody to sign it. Sweet, sweet victory. Since I'd requested to be scheduled on sol 1000, Sharon scheduled me for that day, even though there was no planning that day. I just walked around all day with a big dopey grin on my face. It'll be even sweeter when Opportunity's sol 1000 comes around in a couple of weeks.

This will be the first time we've MId Spirit's solar panels since about sol 505, apparently. Thisol is -- or, rather, these sols are, since the work executes across 1006 and 1007 -- pretty MI-heavy. Ken Herkenhoff, the MI's designer and lead, is going to be in heaven.

Meanwhile, here on Earth, not everything is going that well. Our building has a partial power outage, leaving us with nothing but emergency lighting and the glow from our monitors. I love it, actually. It's all Star Trekky. This is how things are supposed to look around here!

But there are also problems with Maestro, our planning tool, that threaten to delay the day significantly. Fortunately, our TUL, Colette, manages to get things under control, and we finish the day on time -- not with a lot of margin, but some. She's a heroine!

[Next post: sol 1019 (Opportunity sol 1000), November 14.]