NASA on Friday pronounced its Spirit rover cured of the computer ills that crippled the vehicle for two weeks and had threatened its mission to search for geologic evidence that Mars was once a wetter planet.

The rover, which abruptly stopped sending scientific data to Earth last month, underwent delicate repairs as programmers deleted files and cleaned out its flash memory. It was able to resume scientific work Thursday.

The six-wheeled Spirit and its twin, Opportunity, on the other side of Mars, are now being monitored to prevent accumulation of files in their flash memories, similar to the memory used by digital cameras to store pictures.

NASA quickly put Spirit back to work, commanding it to lightly dust off the surface of a volcanic rock and photograph the freshly exposed surface with its microscopic imager.

NASA planned for Spirit to drill into the rock before embarking on an 800-foot drive toward a crater. The trip should begin Saturday at the earliest, and could take a month to complete.

(CRI February 7, 2004)