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On Top Of The Hill
After 581 sols and 4,810 meters (2.99 miles), Spirit reached the crest of "Husband Hill." The top of the hill is moderately flat and fairly easy to navigate. Even though sol 581 (Aug. 21, 2005) marked a major accomplishment for Spirit, the "little rover that could" had no time to rest. On sol 582, the team commanded the rover to drive to a better location for taking images in all directions. This spot was about 20 meters (66 feet) along the crest, and it was from this location that Spirit started acquiring frames with the panoramic camera for a 360-degree, full-color, panorama. The panoramic imaging will take about 12 hours to complete. In Mars time this means about four sols. On sols 583, 584 and 585, Spirit will image the martian landscape, and the team will wait until sol 586 to image the rover equipment deck. Since Spirit will be in the same location for a while, Spirit placed its robotic arm onto an undisturbed soil target and started a long Moessbauer spectrometer integration on sol 584.
Sol-by-sol summaries Spirit was in restricted sols during sols 570 to 581. (Restricted sols occur when the timing of the communications pass from the Odyssey orbiter is too late in the day to gather vital location and health information about the rover after it executed recent commands. The team back on Earth must wait until the next sol to find out where and how the rover is.) Sol 579 (Aug. 19, 2005): Spirit performed remote sensing operations. Sol 580: Spirit performed more remote sensing operations. Sol 581: Spirit drove toward the summit. Sol 582: Spirit drove to a better location to take the panoramic camera images. Sol 583: Spirit turned to get the antenna well-placed for communications with the Odyssey orbiter. The rover took images with the panoramic camera. Sol 584: Spirit continued taking images with the panoramic camera for a complete 360-degree panoramic image. The rover placed the Moessbauer spectrometer on a target. As of the end of sol 584, (Aug. 24, 2005), Spirit had driven 4,827 meters (3.00 miles).
Related Links 
Ithaca NY (SPX) Aug 26, 2005It has been an amazing mission from the beginning. Getting two tremendously intricate machines funded, designed, built, tested, approved, launched, landed safely on a planet millions of miles from Earth and functioning nearly continuously for more than a year and a half is an extraordinary feat.
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