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Bruce Murray Space Image Library

Spirit's cleaning event: Before and after

Spirit's cleaning event: Before and after
Spirit's cleaning event: Before and after These two pictures show Spirit's calibration target (the "Marsdial") before and after a cleaning event wiped Spirit's deck and solar arrays clean of the dust that had accumulated during the first 400-plus Mars days of its operations within Gusev crater. The pictures were taken ten days apart, on 5 March (left) and 15 March (right). On the "before" image, the only spot that is not completely covered in reddish Martian dust is the center of the sweep magnet, located immediately to the right of the Marsdial. NASA / JPL-Caltech / Cornell