Good news/bad news for the Mars Rover Spirit

The good news for the Mars Rover Spirit: a "cleaning event", otherwise known as strong wind and maybe even a dust devil, cleared off enough dust to raise power levels 10%.

The bad news: the computer keeps resetting itself, and the controllers don't know why.

Mars Exploration Rover Mission

SPIRIT UPDATE: Another Reset and a Cleaning Event - sols 1879-1885, April 16-22, 2009:

Spirit experienced another reset event over the weekend, but otherwise has been well-behaved.

The investigation into Spirit's recent anomalous behavior continues, but there is still no explanation. A team of experts involved in the original design and construction of the rover has been consulted. Although the anomalous behavior is frustrating, the rover continues to be healthy in terms of power, temperature and communication.

The plan going forward is to implement some enhanced data-collecting techniques in order to gather more information from any future anomalous events, and to resume near-normal operations. A short drive for Spirit has been sequenced on Sol 1886 (April 23, 2009).

Spirit also had a small dust cleaning event on her solar arrays on Sol 1881 (April 18, 2009). Solar array energy improved by more than 10 percent

As of Sol 1885 (April 22, 2009), Spirit's solar array energy production is 306 watt-hours, about as much as is used in lighting a 100-watt bulb for three hours. Atmospheric opacity (tau) is estimated around 0.964. The dust factor has improved to about 0.377, meaning that about 37.7 percent of sunlight hitting the solar array penetrates the layer of accumulated dust on the array. Spirit's total odometry remains at 7,726.78 meters (4.80 miles).