Mars and Me

So that's it -- that's where my life got too complicated to continue transcribing what happened each day on MER. It's been a blast to revisit MER's early days -- it all flows by so fast when it's happening, and it's been a treat to get to live it all...

It couldn't be a better day to be on shift with Tara and Julie, because we have a visitor. The visitor is Brenda's surgeon's daughter, Amanda. She's graduating from high school and is interested in robotics.
According to Brenda, Amanda has the silly idea that women maybe can't do robotics (even though she's into the field herself), so it's fabulous that she's here on a day when she gets to see two women drive the rover -- 35m toward the dark streak. And...

We come in all hot to drive to the dark streak east of us -- and are sorely disappointed. We had a joint-1 stall in the IDD sequence yesterday. So today turns into a less exciting one; we just have to redo most of yesterday's sequence. But at least it...

We had a perfect bump to the rim yestersol, and we're now ready to take the first eye of our long-baseline stereo here. Then, later thisol, we'll creep 5m along the rim to the position where we'll take the other eye.
It's rare that we drive along the rim like this; mostly, we drive up to the rim, then back away slowly and reapproach somewhere else. I muse about this out loud to Sharon, who's able to put aside a little time to shadow today, and she has a great idea...