Mars Rover beams back colour photos

The successful deployment of the rover's lollipop-shaped main antenna cuts the delay in communications between the rover and Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena to about nine minutes from the hours needed to relay signals through two Mars orbiters, flight director Jason Willis said.

At 9:20 p.m. PST, the control room at JPL erupted in cheers as test signals showed that the rover had correctly located Earth in the Martian sky and had positioned the main, "high gain" antenna correctly.

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"This is just fantastic. We got the high gain antenna to work on the very first try," Mark Adler, Spirit mission manager, said. "We are ready for the rest of the mission."

Spirit began transmitting science and telemetry data, as well as the mission's first color images of the Martian landscape from the rover's high-resolution panoramic cameras.

"I expect to see a lot of good stuff on this pass," Adler said, adding that scientists planned to "wake up" the rover four or five times during the night to calibrate temperature sensors that may have failed.

The mission fell behind Sunday as scientists ran out of time to cut cables that tied the folded-up rover to battery and electronics systems on its landing pad, an omission that may delay its three-stage "stand-up" by one Martian day, or "sol," about 40 minutes longer than an Earth day, Adler said.

The team also may try to retract airbags that cushioned the rover's landing but now block its path to the planet's surface, adding another sol to the time needed to prepare the robotic rover for its three-month trek across Mars' surface to look for ancient evidence of life-giving water in the rocks and soil.