Mars and Me

Thisol's TUL is Julie Townsend, and she's a little distracted. She's trying to finalize her (re-)enrollment at Stanford, where ...

Mars is once more visible from Earth. And we rover planners are back to work. Thisol's sequence is mostly cut and pasted from previous ...

If all goes well, I don't have a job. For the next ten days or so, that is -- we won't be driving the rover or moving the IDD durin...

Our email problems and the attendant scheduling problems continue, but it seems to be getting better. I arrive an hour early -- thinking I...

The project's in a bit of a tizzy. The email server that handles all of the MER ops mailing lists was cracked a couple of days back, an...

I'm running late and there's no parking, but I still manage to make it up to the SOWG room right on time. Where I find an ongoing m...

I have an interview this morning, with a reporter from the London Sunday Times . He's here to do a car-review-style piece on the rovers...

The longer we stay at a rock target, the easier exploring it becomes. In part this is because we can reuse successful commands from previous...

This morning is one of those mornings that makes me appreciate all the mornings that aren't like this morning. But there's good news...

"Let me tell you, this target sucks," Chris exclaims. Truly, this target is in a very odd spot. The flight software will happily...

Amazingly, it worked. I don't know if we're better than I think we are or if we just dodged a bullet this time, but it worked. The...

I'm the only rover driver who hasn't worked on both rovers. Brian and Jeff did most of Spirit's first drive before moving to Op...

So I'm RP-1, bright and shiny at 8 AM. And Art's here, so it's almost like the old days. "How ya doing, Art?" I ask,...

I've been scheduled for the last few sols, but there's been no rover motion. We're taking advantage of our good power situation...

I'm RP-1 again. I come in at 8:30, expecting the SOWG meeting at 9:00. But 9:00 rolls around, and no SOWG meeting. In fact, from list...

This is my first RP-1 sol since I-don't-know-when, and moreover I'm doing it solo -- the scheduling snafu left us no RP-2, though Ch...

This is new: Ashitey's RP-1 thisol. This is also new: there's no RP-1 scheduled for nextersol. But that's a scheduling snafu, o...

But of course I didn't go. Too much moving to do. "You should have gone," says Chris. He's nursing a hangover, and he...

The switchback drive worked -- we've reached the outcrop, and the scientists are awfully excited about it. John and I get to be the fir...

The news starts off good, at least. No errors on the drive, and we turned as expected for comm. But where the hell are we? It looks like w...