Posted by tourdemars to Mars Exploration Rovers at March 12, 2005 10:48 AM

Mars scientists and engineers are elated about a dust-busting blast that has struck the Spirit rover at its Gusev crater exploration site. Turns out that a martian whirlwind – dubbed a dust devil – likely zoomed over the robot high up in the Columbia Hills. That fleeting flyby effectively cleaned Spirit’s solar arrays, giving the robot a new lease on life. Engineers report that the rover’s power reading quickly shot up to almost as high as when the rover landed on Mars over a year ago.