Hey… More Front Page News From MARS
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4094437.stm
Water and Frost. What more can you ask for.
Everyday these robots amaze me.
They are amazing. Kudos to NASA and any others that built the rovers. It’s amazing how long they’ve outlived thier life expectancy, and at the rate they’re going they will still be running by the time we’re able to send humans to Mars!
On January 3 and January 24 we will be celebrating the one-year anniversary of the Spirit and Opportunity landings. At that point, it certainly appears that both rovers will still be merrily driving their way across the surface of Mars. This is something that we never really expected - we built these machines to last 90 sols (Mars days), and thought we would be extraordinarily fortunate if they survived for 120-150 sols. To now be heading for a full year of operations is a real head rush! Based on the mechanical wear rates we are seeing, they have the potential to go on for a very long time past that. We have stopped trying to predict how long the rovers will last. Of course, it could all come to a screeching halt tomorrow if any of about a gazillion small items does finally wear out or fail. So we are just looking at each additional day of operations as a gift from a system that is currently working at 300% of the original design lifetime, and grabbing on to each additional bit of information we are able to gather. And at the same time, there is a small army of scientists that are already rewriting all the text books on what we know about Mars, based on the discoveries enabled by these little machines.
-dave
It blows my mind that this is so under the radar of 99.9% of America. America needs to know about this. It is not a trivial feat. I just don’t get it.
Thanks Dave and all of NASA. Good Job.
Maybe if we added sex appeal and some sort of violent, confrontational behavior between rovers, something like MTV or FOX would pick it up…
J/k. The rovers aren’t what most people want to see, they simply want results. They see their tax money go out, they want to see a direct benefit come back in. But if no one gave columbus money to explore, the earth would still be flat. How many americans do you think would fund something like that today? I’m guessing the users of this forum would vote for it, but we’d be in the minority.
At any rate, I too am quite impressed by the rovers. I remember last year falling asleep at my computer in my room watching the simulation of the lander thru the NASA TV broadcast as it landed. So awesome. Congrats!
(Any chance on getting some white papers of the drive systems? hehe)
wow !! i cannot believe it has already been a year … doesnt seem like it was that long ago …
anyways congratulations on everything!!