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.

That’s no Mount Everest, but for a little rover this was a heck of a climb,

What field geologists typically do – and Spirit is a robotic field geologist – is you climb to the top of the nearest hill and take a look around so you get the lay of...

Our current focus is to drive like hell ‘¦ and try to get [Spirit] to safe winter havens before the power situation gets really bad.

It is a big step. We’ve really switched gears.

We’re there, for all intents and purposes.

One possibility is that it’s the last layer to form. It speaks to yet another water episode.

In terms of sheer scenic grandeur, it is the most spectacular image we’ve taken. It’s like nothing else on Mars.

A sol like that gives you confidence. I’m really convinced now that we’re able to keep the vehicle safe.

Our requirement for how far we should be able to traverse over the course of the mission, was 600 meters. These hills are five times that far away. OK, so don’t sit here and think,...

They provide a wonderful glimpse into what Mars was like in the earliest part of its history, … It was a violent place. It was a place where meteorite impacts were happening frequently. It was...

We have no idea yet how widespread Home Plate-like material may be. We have not seen anything like this before, but it doesn’t mean there isn’t more stuff out there.

We think Opportunity is now parked on what was once the shoreline of a salty sea on Mars.

We can see most of the crater from where we are right now, and we’ve made the decision that we’re going to traverse around it on its western side. We’re actually going to start the...

This climb was motivated by science,

These look like hard outer shells on some parts of some outcrops, and they’re darker and a little redder than the rock that they encrust.

I actually see the Mars year anniversary as being more significant, … We will have seen Mars over an entire seasonal cycle.

Also, we’re doing what any field geologist would do in an area like this: climbing to a good vantage point for plotting a route.

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

I’m leaving this one open for now.

The British mountaineer George Mallory was once famously asked why he was trying to climb Mount Everest and his famous reply was ‘because it is there.’ That’s a compelling argument when you are a mountaineer....

We’re just waiting. We’re just in awe of what we’re seeing and we’re just waiting to see the whole thing so we can really get about the business of deciding what to do.