There is a short description of the press conference now on the Rover website, mostly talking about how the chemical makeup of the rocks they've found on the hill with Spirit show changes due to presumed water and that the chemistry of the rocks and soil in Endurance changes as the depth does. That seems like old news to me. Could've sworn we've been hearing this same stuff for weeks.

I was hoping instead to find out future travel plans for both rovers or to see the mother-of-all pans that it appears Spirit's pancam has been returning in full color parts. I just truly suspect that the scientific data both Rovers are going to send back through the end of their lifetimes is going to be redundant at best. Each rock they drill into pretty much seems like the last one or one they've examined prior. It sure seems that the instruments have found what they were designed to look for.

I'm all for getting as much distance on the rovers as they can under the constraints of power and failing equipment and seeing as much of the surface as possible before they give up their ghosts. Of course if some feature they pass is remarkable they need to stop and investigate but I have to tell you, many of the stops to look at a rock pretty much ended up with stuff they'd already known or seemed pretty obvious after just looking at the thing.

Now the scientists and geologists are going to bash me for this blasphemy but I have this feeling that we've gotten all the major scientific discoveries out of these remarkable rovers that their instruments were created to retrieve. I just have this nagging feeling that some grand scale discovery awaits us just over the crest of a Columbia hill or a miles away from Endurance Crater and that too many stops at the small stuff on the way to those things are going to slow them down just enough so that the rover dies prior to getting to the big prize. I'll feel fulfilled once Spirit gets to a vantage point where it can peer down into valley to the SE of the Columbia Hills.

Obviously I'm not in the control rooms and akin to the info the decision makers have so this is just wild dreaming and brainstorming. Also, I'm extremely aware that power considerations and failing components may be factors in keeping the rovers fairly still these days.