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Originally Posted by Andrew Blair
Well, this is completely off topic, but according to the History channel, NASA never paid that fine.  |
We have never figured out who to write the check to...
But, yes, the rovers are still going strong and doing admirably well. Having Spirit pass her second anniversary on Mars, and Opportunity about to do the same, has been a VERY well appreciated present for the team. We don't know how long they are going to last, and we are treating every extra day of operations on Mars as an extremely valuable resource. They could stop operating tomorrow, or go on for another two years. We are now in an area that is so far beyond the original designed lifetime that we just don't know.
But since our rovers are rapidly approaching 10 times their intended lifetimes, we have received a few requests to consider building the next generation of automobiles. We were thinking about it, until someone pointed out that we might have a hard time getting a lot of takers with the $461,000,000 per unit price point...
-dave