Good afternoon, my name is Leo Bister. I’m Flight Director today for the MER project. I’d like to give you a quick update on what’s happening with the rovers.

Today is sol 112 for the Spirit rover. We are currently on our way to the Columbia hills which are south of Bonneville crater, the first big crater that we visited on Mars. We have been driving in earnest towards those hills and we’re currently on a four day cycle. Every day is different in a four day rotation. The last couple of days we’ve driven a 140 meters and as we move away from the Bonneville crater the number of rocks in our driving direction is decreasing steadily, so we expect to be able to achieve greater than 100 meters on most driving days during this timeperiod. We expect to be doing this for the next 50 sols or so. Spirit remains in excellent health.

Opportunity on the other side of Mars is also doing very well. We’ve been at a crater Fram and now we are on our way towards a crater we call Endurance. We stopped about 40 meters away from Fram and it was at Fram that we spent three days doing some science called photometry at that spot. One thing we did there was we used one of the wheels on the rover to make a scuff mark in the soil and then spent some time analysing that. We’re now done with that activity and again on our way towards Endurance crater. Endurance crater is about 170 meters away. So it will take us a day or two to get there.

That’s it for now. Both rovers remain in excellent health. Have a good day.