Mars Rovers STILL going strong! Whoo-hoo!

MattusMaximus

Intellectual Gladiator
MattusMaximus
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Jan 26, 2006
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Five years and still going! Yaaaay NASA! :D

NASA's Mars Rovers Still Making Tracks

Talk about getting your money's worth. Five years ago today, NASA's roving geological robot called Spirit landed safely on the planet Mars. It was designed to last 90 days. Five years later, Spirit is still going.

And going.

And going.

The mission would have been considered a success if the rover had made it 600 yards from its landing site. Spirit has now driven nearly five miles. ...
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Wow. Just Wow!

Can you imagine what the people who worked on designing, building, flying and controlling these robots must feel?
 
Truly incredible, and it's been great to read about the mission & findings all this time.
I just wish this was being made into a bigger news story. Like, perhaps, as much coverage as when they make a mistake...
 
The only thing that might get greater media coverage with NASA as to their making a grave mistake or accident would be discovery of extraterrestrial life.

Maybe.
 
mumchup said:
Truly incredible, and it's been great to read about the mission & findings all this time.
I just wish this was being made into a bigger news story. Like, perhaps, as much coverage as when they make a mistake...
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Its an interesting point. When NASA do get it right, they get it really really right. A number of previous probes going all the way back to the Pioneer series have exceeded their design limits by some amazing amounts.

Pioneer 10 was still being used for training exercises as late as 1997, that is over 25 years in space. Pioneer 11 made it too 20 years, and both Voyager probes may get beyond 30 years.

It is refreshing to see humans can occasionally be really really smart sometimes
 
Pioneer 6 (for all we know) is still going. It was last tracked for telemetry in 2000 on the occasion of its 35th anniversary. They no longer track it because what science data it can return still is not that valuable.
 
It brings tears to the hardboiled engineer's eye, doesn't it? They said in one article I read that the two rovers will eat up another four lifetimes of work each before it gets cold again.
 
BenBurch said:
Pioneer 6 (for all we know) is still going. It was last tracked for telemetry in 2000 on the occasion of its 35th anniversary. They no longer track it because what science data it can return still is not that valuable.
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Good call - according to wiki 6 7 8 9 are all still capable of contact at the momment, but as you said. There is little they can record that we need to know anymore

Kinda sad really
 
I like to picture them hurtling through interstellar space for a few hundred million years or so, until they burn up on entry somewhere interesting.
 
mumchup said:
I like to picture them hurtling through interstellar space for a few hundred million years or so, until they burn up on entry somewhere interesting.
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I recall when young reading a story set in the far future when the last stars in the galaxy are starting to fade. There are millions of these probes from all the millions of races that inhabated the galaxy at one time all starting to congregate around the central black hole, trying to figure out how they could continue their various missions to gather data
 
I'm beyond proud of our achievements and thrilled that they're still on the move. The future could be very exciting.
 
MG1962 said:
Its an interesting point. When NASA do get it right, they get it really really right. A number of previous probes going all the way back to the Pioneer series have exceeded their design limits by some amazing amounts.
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Common across a fair number of fields. If an initial design flaw doesn't take it out then wear and tear can take a long time to finish it off. Deep space missions have something of an advantage here. Surface probes should suffer more wear.
 
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