spacetoday.net: Opportunity to roll off lander Saturday night

Posted: Fri, Jan 30, 2004, 9:46 AM ET (1446 GMT)
Mars Exploration Rover (NASA/JPL)

Mars Exploration Rover project officials said Thursday they believe the rover Opportunity will be ready to roll off its lander and onto the Martian surface late Saturday night. The rover, which landed on Mars late in the evening on January 24, has been put through its paces on the lander, with its front and rear pairs of wheels now deployed. If all goes well, the rover will be ready to roll off the lander late Saturday night. Meanwhile, engineers said efforts to revive Opportunity's twin, Spirit, are proceeding well. Although work to fully repair the rover continues, the spacecraft is now in well enough condition to resume scientific work from its current position. Work continues to trace down the problem that caused the repeated computer resets last week, and engineers may decide to simply erase the entire contents of Spirit's flash memory then try to delete selected files.