Marvin writes:

There is very little news *of interest* regarding the rover. Its job is to
examine the geology of the area. To do this, it has the ability to drive
around, looking for rocks that differ from the basic dirt & dust that
covers most of the surface. But! To do the comparison, we need to know just
what the dust & dirt is made of. That is what the rover is doing right now.
Its not driving around, its not drilling into rocks, its not doing
*anything* exciting. What is *is* doing is staring at the dirt in front of
it, photographing the dirt, analysing the dirt. I expect this will be
followed by an in-depth examination of the rover tracks in abovementioned
dirt. Boring!

Later on, once the basic mars-dirt is understood (and all the instruments
on the rover checked out & calibrated), we should get some more exciting
happenings. Just keep in mind that the rover can complete some 50+ percent
of its job right where it is now, just off the lander. No need to do any of
the glamorous stuff, before the first set of objectives are met.

This had to be said... If they can get the rover over to a larger crater
and do the same boring stuff on the rocks and soil ejected by the impact
(and/or the crater itself) this can easily be the remaining 50%.

Nevertheless I'm stunned by the lack of discussion regarding the images
sent by Spirit. I you look for keywords like "geology", "mars" and
"spirit" with Google, you will find almost nothing. I you look for
"bush" and "mars" you will drown in speculation and nonsense. Oh my...


Jochem

--
"A designer knows he has arrived at perfection not when there is no
longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take
away." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery