Steve Squyres

8:30 AM: Just went out and walked the site... they definitely found 22-1 correctly last night.

8:50 AM: MC back on the rover. We're about to start test drilling a soft rock right behind the trailer.

It dug in 10 mm in just a couple of minutes.

10:32 AM: Coring commands sent. Unfortunately, the force sensor triggered before we made contact... due to a software problem. Tried it a second time and got the same result. We decided at that point to leave the software fix for later and just hard-command it one step at a time.

10:45 AM: Starting to drill. It chattered around on the surface just a little bit before engaging, but then dug in and began penetrating nicely. We got in about 3 mm drilling at a force of ten pounds and then upped the force to twenty pounds. It then really started slicing into the rock, and made it down to 1 cm in just a couple of minutes.

11:14 AM: Did the breakoff and extracted... there's rock in the MC. Pitched up and docked. We got several belly cam images through this sequence with MC in the hole, and then MC slightly above the hole. There's a nice pile of cuttings.

11:20 AM: Trying to get a Color Microscopic Imager image on the docked MC. We took images at a standoff distance of about 2 m and up against the hardstops. Both were pretty significantly out of focus. We tried also z-ing the MC back about 5 mm and took one more.

11:42 AM: We're dumping the core. Curt has stored it in a vial.

11:47 AM: We're going to drive the rover backwards about 60 cm and get a MI image sequence on the hole and cuttings. Plan is to drive the MI to the hardstop, and then take a sequence of about 5 images, backing away about 2 mm at a time.

12:25 PM: Rover is in position to place the MI on the hole and cuttings. The MI is hovering straight above the hole. Eric is working out the arm kinematics in his head and commanding three joints simultaneously to try to move the MI straight down onto the hole.

12:33 PM: We're about 1 to 1.5 cm above the rock now with the MI, and we're going to take an image.

With the image you can see the hole and the cuttings fairly clearly.

12:37 PM: We've hand-tilted the hazcams back to a close-to-correct position, and taken an image showing the arm. You can see the elbow joint.

12:42 PM: Taking a 3x1 navcam panorama down towards the strongback, to see how the arm looks in the deployed configuration.

1:45 PM: Rover is on and we think the hazcams are now properly aligned.

2:15 PM: Starting 7x2 navcam panorama, centered on 150. We should be able to see 22-1 pretty nicely from here, especially since we backed off of 21-4 a little to see the hole with the MI.

We're going to drive straight toward 21-4 once we've spotted it. A straight-in approach will make it easier to get onto the rock with the MC.

2:26 PM: We found it easily, in the bottom right-hand corner of wedge six.

True rover heading right now is 110. We're going to command it to a waypoint that is on a direct line to the rock, but about 1.5 meters short of it. We'll use hazard avoidance to get there, but we'll command it to turn to a heading of zero (in its current frame) once it arrives. This should leave it pointing straight at the rock.

The heading to the rock in the current rover frame is 142. We're therefore going to turn to a heading of 142 at the end of the traverse.

2:55 PM: Rain has started. Curt is flagging the wheels and we're putting the rover into the box. We're hoping to wait this one out.

3:30 PM: Still in a weather delay. Randy Lindemann and others with the Software Development Module are using their rover in a gully. Currently, it has few electronic components, so it can withstand some rain.

3:40 PM: We're about to drive to our next waypoint. We're going to command it to turn to a (rover-local) heading of 142 at the end of its traverse. That should put it pointed straight at the rock, on a true heading of 110+142=252.

3:56 PM: We overshot for some reason, and now we're turning around and heading back. It looks like we've ended up roughly where we want to be, but headed in the opposite direction. The turn to 142 rover-local at the end was almost a 180 deg turn, and we should be on a heading close to 252 true. This is now site 3, location 1.

We are on a true heading of 251 That's an error of one degree after making two U-turns.

4:12 PM: We can see 22-1 in the hazcam image, a meter and a half away and just slightly to the right of center.

Next up is IPS on the cal target, navcam on the cal target, IPS on the rock, navcam on the rock.

Okay, we've done the geometry for the MC positioning move. We want to turn right 9 degrees, and drive forward 1.00 meters.

4:50 PM: Executing the drive sequence. We've told the people at the site not to tell us how well we've done this time. We'll then pitch the MC down and take a right bellycam image. The idea is to see if we can tell from within the trailer whether or not we're positioned properly.

Permission to drill granted. This is a hard rock. We're going to start at ten pounds and then add more.

We're working the MC down manually.

We've engaged it. We're increasing the force to 20 pounds. We're getting dust from the drilling. Some vibration of the rover. Cuttings are definitely forming, however, so we are certainly drilling.

News from Tom Myrick at the site is that we had about 3 cm of tornadoing before we entered, but that it then settled down pretty nicely. Probably due to the backlash in the pitch axis. We're now definitely penetrating into the rock... we're getting something like 1 mm/minute of penetration at the moment.

5:47 PM: We're 10 mm in and stopped. We did 10 mm in 13 minutes. We're going to command another 5 mm of drilling. First we're retracting the z axis a little bit to re-set the force sensor. Now we're going to drill some more at 15 pounds.

5:57 PM: Now we're starting to drill again, but this time without unloading the z axis. Penetrated a little bit more, and now we're breaking off. Once we're homed, we'll take a bellycam image.

6:04 PM: Just got the bellycam image we were close to the edge of the rock but it still cored.

6:10 PM: We're computing the rough heading to the lander from where we are. We measured the heading to 22-1 from the lander the day before yesterday, so all we need is a back bearing to get it. We're going to take a 5x2 pan centered about about a heading of 120 in the rover frame, and then drive it back to the lander.

6:25 PM: Navcam panorama done... stowing and hot-swapping the batteries.

We see the lander. We're going to drive to a point in the top right corner of wedge 6.

6:30 PM: Setting a waypoint close to the lander, and getting ready to drive to it.

6:45 PM: We're close enough to see where we want to be in the hazcams, so we're going to command one more drive using the hazcams to get it home.

6:49 PM: The rover is now sensing the lander box as an obstacle... we're so close we can almost read the writing on the side of the box in the hazcam images.

We're back at the lander.