Rover Spirit Gets a Cleaning Date: 23 Mar 2005 These two images
from 10 days apart show that dust was removed from the panoramic
camera's calibration target on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover
Spirit. Spirit's panoramic camera took the picture on the left
on the rover's 416th martian day, or sol, (March 5, 2005) and
took the picture on the right on sol 426 (March 15, 2005).
During the time in-between, other evidence of dust-lifting winds
were a jump in power output by Spirit's solar arrays on sol 420
from removal of some accumulated dust, and sighting of two dust
devils in sol 421 images from Spirit. The size of the base plate
on the calibration target shown in both of these images is 8
centimeters (3.15 inches) on each side. These are the panoramic
camera team's best current attempt at generating "true color"
views of what these scenes would look like if viewed by a human
on Mars. They were generated from mathematical combinations of
six calibrated, left-eye Pancam images for each sequence, using
filters rangin