Indomitable Spirit

[elfs]

While we're all distracted elsewhere, the toughest freakin' robots in known space just keep going. The Mars Spirit Rover, which landed on January 3rd 2004 and was expected to last "maybe 90 Martian days, if we're very lucky," ended it's 593rd Martian (606 Terran) days today. For months, it's been driving around the base of a collecting of hills five kilometers from its landing spot and the crew on Earth finally ordered it to climb to the top. It made it today.

The view from Spirit atop Husband Hill, Mars.
Hosted by NASA. Click to enlarge.

Despite having a broken wheel necessitating often driving backwards, despite a crashed filesystem early on that gave it seziures, despite losing one of its spectrometers, and despite being over its warranty ten times, Spirit endures.

Opportunity had a software crash last week, but it seems to have recovered. It too is still going, and at the same rate as Spirit. Spirit is getting fabulous views but Opportunity landed in a geologically diverse area and is returning a lot more science. The pictures aren't as interesting so it gets less attention, but it's still there and still widening our understanding of the universe.

Comments

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Husband Hill? As in Rick Husband?

[http://users.livejournal.com/_candide_/]

Yup. The very same.

They evidently named several features after the deceased members of Space Shuttle Columbia's final crew.

[rapier.livejournal.com]

If things go the way they should, the central park of the first Mars habitat will have at its center a monument to these two robots. The first generation of Mars-born kiddies will play on and around the giant mockups of Spirit and Opportunity while their parents watch. And if things go the way they should, it'll happen in our lifetime.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[(Anonymous)]

Keep in mind that Mars' atmosphere is very thin -- barely one percent of Earth's -- and that there hasn't been any surface liquid in a very long time. There's not going to be the kind of erosion that created the Grand Canyon. Also, tectonic activity on Mars ended billions of years ago, so you're not going to get dramatic new mountain ranges, either. Rocks, plains, and the occasional leftover mountain/volcano like Olympus Mons are about all you can expect.

Titan is a much more likely candidate for cool surface features. There's a lot of atmosphere, high winds, apparently lots of surface liquid (including rivers), and probably lots of tectonic activity from tidal effects from Saturn and the other moons.

As for Spirit and Opportunity, they are indeed very cool, but NASA has admitted to "scottying" their estimated lifetimes in order to cover their butts in case they died relatively quickly. That said, I don't think anybody expected them to last this long. There have been a couple of mysterious "car wash" events which have cleaned the dust off their solar panels and given them a power boost. Hopefully they'll continue to return good data for a long time to come.

Jeremy