5 YEARS on Mars

[Dr Mordrid]

Spirit and Opportunity mark their 5th year on Mars, a full 4 years and 9 months longer than they were expected to last and they're still going. During this time a huge number of discoveries have been made, a large number of which turned 'conventional wisdom' on its ear.

Talk about getting our moneys worth, and congratulations to the teams that built them!!

Link....

[KRSESQ]

Considering Spirit has been gimping around dragging a frozen wheel for the past nearly three years, that's saying something.

Kevin

[cjolley]

[Nowhere]

Perhaps they should think about semi-serial production of Mk. II model and swarm the planet with them...

[Dr Mordrid]

I think it's a great idea - build an improved version of the base platform, add a modular power system, comms etc. so they can be upgraded then hang on 'mission modules' according to what you want to achieve.

How much money would be saved if you built such a standard rover "bus"? A lot, but the problem is there isn't enough money in NASA's budget to build enough buses to realize the savings. End of discussion.

Yes, they're wasting billions on Ares I and hopefully it gets canned and they move that money to using EELV's or Falcon 9 Heavy to launch Orion...but thinking any of those savings will go to a rover bus is dreaming. Only if new money gets budgeted to unmanned exploration will it have a chance of happening.

[Nowhere]

And imagine the potential for publicity stunts, for example when on April Fools two of the rover teams will anounce "we've discovered another artificially made object!"

[VJ]

There was this Heineken commercial, that used the mars rovers in an original way:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neoUi4poCXI

Jörg

[Evildead666]

Sweeeeet.

I'm bookmarking that for all the other ads too

The Rovers are doing exceptionally well tho, considering how long they were thought to last...

Its a tribute to those who designed and built them, and sent them, etc... (standing ovation)

[Nowhere]

And you know, sometimes (like now) image/etc. of them reminds me of their uncanny resemblance to replicators from SG-1...wonder how that'll end

[High_Jumbllama]

Well. . . . it takes a minimum of six blocks to replicate so we should be good for now.