We still want to get to the summit of Husband Hill and then head down into the ‘Inner Basin’ on the other side. But now we have more flexibility in how we carry out the...

This is a journey into the unknown, to something completely new.

This climb was motivated by science. Every time Spirit has gained altitude, we’ve found different rock types. Also, we’re doing what any field geologist would do in an area like this: climbing to a good...

One mystery we ‘ ve been dealing with for a long time is the origin of the little dark Ë cobbles ‘ that we occasionally see out on the plains,

We were fearful for a time that the motor may have failed permanently. If that were the case, we’d never be able to use the arm again.

This is [fundamentally] different than anything we have seen before.

For Opportunity, we’re going to continue south through the etched terrain, studying bedrock as we go and heading toward Victoria crater.

We’re also really getting the hang of driving in this terrain.

[Before launch] it just seemed impossibly far away, it seemed unreachable. Tonight, I go out knowing our rovers have been there a whole Martian year…it’s a much more familiar planet. We know the place.

I cannot tell you that we are going to reach those hills,

One mystery weve been dealing with for a long time is the origin of the little dark cobbles that we occasionally see out on the plains,

The berries are more numerous here, and some seem to be smaller than any we ‘ ve ever seen. And interestingly, some don ‘ t appear to be round. We ‘ re still debating what...

It was a hot, violent place with volcanic explosions and impacts. Water was around, perhaps localized hot springs in some cases and trace amounts of water in other cases.

But that’s purely conjecture at this point ” a working hypothesis. Everything is on the table until we’ve gotten more data down.

The root cause of the reset remains a mystery, but I guess the occasional odd glitch is to be expected from a vehicle that’s been on Mars for almost 600 sols.

Driving in that terrain was a challenge with all six wheels. With five wheels, it was a mess.

Nobody has the display capability in their homes you’d need to really see these images in all their grandeur. One panorama we created was 4,000 pixels high and 24,000 pixels around, and your laptop just...

The launch is a milestone, but just one of many along the way. Landing historically is where the most risk is involved.

Once we’ve finished the rest of the list, we’ll start the descent.

Chris will remember vividly as we were struggling along the northwestern flank of that mountain how much loose, fine-grain stuff there was. Our wheels would dig in, we’d slip around and we’d dig in deep....

This was an inhabitable environment on Mars. This was a shallow sea. These rocks … it’s a salt flat. These are the kinds of environments that are very suitable for life.

We’re not going to take any risks. It’s a big crater in terms of diameter, but really shallow. It’s nothing like Endurance.

Easy problem to find and fix, but it happened at just the wrong time and cost us data, and one more sol, … Another first for the Mars Exploration Rover Project.

We’ll be busy here for a long time.

We have to assume the worst…that the solar panels are going to stay dirty and just get dirtier.

For the scientists, it may be a chance to look at the deepest fresh hole in the ground that we’ll ever see on Mars. … For the engineers, it’s an unprecedented chance to see how...

When we first touched down at Gusev Crater on the night of January 4, 2004, the Columbia Hills seemed impossibly far away. It was a necessary place for us to get to, though, because as...

What we have found once we’ve gotten up into the summit region…the driving has gotten very, very good. The ground is hard here. There is not a lot of fine-grain stuff around. What there is...

That’d be interesting too, though [it would] tell us less about Mars than if they’re martian rocks.

That kind of stuff is hard enough to drive in with six wheels, and with five it was just about impossible. It was really frustrating, being that close to the place we wanted to get...

That was waiting to bite us. If Opportunity had landed first, it would have had the same problem.

Today is day 591 of our 90-day mission to Mars.

It’s very similar in composition, with very similar textures when you look at it with a microscope, but it’s dipping in all different directions. What it says is that the geology around here is pretty...

So don’t sit here and think, ‘Oh, we’re going to go to the hills.’ We’re going to go ‘toward’ the hills,

Wind has to be involved at some level you figure. Frost might have helped. A frost build-up on arrays could coagulate the dust…but the fact is that we don’t understand it very well. But I’ll...

With respect to how long it’s going to take us to get down the hill, we don’t have a whole lot of experience driving this vehicle downhill — we’ve been going uphill for more than...

I don’t have a belief regarding that question.

Both rovers continue to be in superb health. It has been just a remarkable mission and I would say we literally feel on top of the world right now being on the summit of Husband...

Spirit is our tough, hardworking robot. Opportunity looks like she just came off the showroom floor, clean and pretty.

The deciding factor will be how good the geology is. I think going downhill has the potential to go a bit faster, it’s easier to go downhill with these vehicles than going up.

Unfortunately, recovering from something like a reset is a slow, lengthy process. You don’t know what caused the problem, and the immediate concern is that whatever triggered it will do it again next time you...

We’ve got some evidence, I think, of water flowing through the rocks, and changes in chemistry, I don’t think we have what any of us would consider compelling evidence for surface water yet.

That’s no Mt. Everest, but it’s a heck of a climb for our little rover, … When we first touched down at Gusev Crater on Jan. 4, 2004, the Columbia Hills looked impossibly far away.

That very rugged stuff. There is a guy on our team who actually calls this the geologic promised land. I don’t know if it’s going to turn out to be that good or not and...

We’re in a drive-or-die situation.

We’re using the same landing technique that Pathfinder used.

I have a huge amount of respect for what they’ve accomplished,

We’ve been very curious to figure out what they are.

It’s not like anything I’ve ever seen before, … It’s very weird looking stuff.

There’s a lot of good stuff beyond it.