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hi I'm JPL Mars rover driver Scott

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Maxwell and this is a free-spirit update

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I'm sitting here at JPL and one of the

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operations rooms we used to drive the

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rover and the software you see running

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behind me is the software we used to

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drive the two Mars rovers now as you

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might know back in late May spirit was

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traversing Northwest around a feature

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called home plate when she broke through

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a hard kind of crusty surface layer of

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material very much like an ice skater

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falling through a crust of ice over the

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surface of a pond and spirit became

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trapped in the softer looser material

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that had previously been hidden

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underneath our initial attempts to drive

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her out were unsuccessful and so we told

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spirit to sit tight for a little while

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on Mars while we figured out how to get

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her free back here on earth this is an

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animation that we put together to help

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us understand how spirit got into this

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predicament and what happened on our

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first attempts to drive her out this is

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a very useful tool for us to help

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understand what's going on with one of

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the rover's at a critical moment like

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this

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now even though spirits been sitting in

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one place all this time she hasn't been

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entirely idle she's been using her

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scientific instruments to help explore

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this material that she ended up getting

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trapped in and this stuff turns out to

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be very fascinating on a scientific

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basis it gives us some of the best

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evidence that we found for past water

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activity on Mars

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from either Rover so for the science

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team this has been very much like your

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car breaking down in front of Disneyland

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even so we'd really like spirit to get

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back on the road so we've been

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conducting a number of tests in order to

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help us understand the best way to do

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that in the most recent of these was

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something we call an operational

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readiness test or ort this is a test

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where we try to do everything with the

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test rover in exactly the same way as we

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would do it with the flight rover rule

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number one of an ort is no peeking the

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other world where drivers in Iowa kept

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strictly away from the test bed weren't

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allowed to go down there and look at the

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real Rover and instead we had to make

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all of our decisions based on data that

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was sent back by the test robos it's

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very much like the data that would be

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sent back by spirit and in the same way

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we had to command the test Rover

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using only the same kind of software and

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the same kind of procedures that we'll

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be using to command spirit when we get

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ready to do this extrication for real

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Mars does not owe us a solution to this

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problem and there might not be one but

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we are very confident that we have the

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best possible plan under the

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circumstances and we're ready to begin

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implementing it very soon it's going to

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be a slow and lengthy process taking

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weeks or maybe even months but we'll

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keep you posted on spirits progress and

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we hope you'll follow along