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Press Release Images: Spirit
07-August-2007
Robotic Arm Activity Resumes on Spirit
This color image shows two vertical trenches of churned-up soil. In the left trench, the upturned soil is bright white. In the right trench, the upturned soil appears bluish gray. Between the tracks is a swath of undisturbed, rust-red soil.
NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit moved its robotic arm during the rover's 1,277th Martian day (Aug. 6) for the first time in 20 days.

Teams operating Spirit and Opportunity have been keeping both rovers' activity levels very low through July and early August of 2008 because dust storms have obscured much of the sunshine that the rovers rely upon for their solar arrays to generate electricity. However, the sky had cleared enough above Spirit by Martian day (or sol) 1,276 for the team to decide to resume moving the arm. One of the tools at the end of the arm is the microscopic imager. Spirit was commanded to move the arm for using that instrument to examine two soil targets and one rock target.

This image was taken by the left hazard-identification camera on Spirit during sol 1,277. It documents that the arm had repositioned the microscopic imager.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell
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