The arrival of spring in southern Mars is reviving NASA’s two venerable Mars rovers as deepening autumn in the arctic north slowly freezes the Phoenix lander.
After hibernating for the winter on the northern edge of a plateau called Home Plate, the Spirit rover moved uphill in October to collect more sunlight.
On the other side of the planet, the Opportunity rover, which climbed out of a large crater called Victoria at the end of August, has completed the first month of a 12-kilometre trek towards an even bigger crater called Endeavour. That journey is expected to take more than two years.
Designed to last only 90 days, the two rovers have survived for nearly five years on the Red Planet. Both are showing their age, but Jake Matijevic, chief of rover engineering at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, says they still are doing fine.