NASA’s Mars rovers were designed to last for at least 90 days on the Red Planet, and from the start, mission scientists hoped that they’d keep working well after their “warranty” expired. But few dared to predict that both Spirit and Opportunity would still be on the move five Earth years after they bounced to the surface.
To celebrate Spirit’s five-year anniversary, mission managers have released a sweeping new panorama of the rover’s winter refuge in Gusev Crater.
Spirit touched down, cushioned by airbags, on Jan. 3, 2004 (or Jan. 4, depending on your time zone). Since then it has traveled almost 4.7 miles (7.5 kilometers). It spent the last few months waiting out the Martian winter near an intriguing light-colored formation nicknamed Home Plate.
“This last winter was a squeaker for Spirit,” John Callas, the rover mission’s project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a news release issued Monday. “We just made it through.”
Mars Rovers Hit 5-Year Mark
Visions of Mars National Geographic
Robot explorers transform a distant object of wonder into intimate terrain.
Spirit Mars Rover May Be Dead Too Now Gizmodo
More bad bad news. Just two days ago Phoenix Mars Lander sent his last words, and NASA announced the end of the mission because of a storm that covered its solar panels with Martian dust. Today, we have learnt that the Mars Spirit rover may be dying too because exactly the same problem. In fact, according to Bruce Banerdt—the mission manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and part-time Hulk impersonator—he may be dead already:
This is a very dangerous time. If we don’t hear from it on Thursday, we’ll be extremely concerned.
The culprit, again: A sudden dust storm over the Martian equatorial plains. This storm has covered the solar panels during the last days and, as a result, the Mars Spirit only produced 89 watt-hours last weekend. This is half the amount it needs to keep functioning. Scientists at the JPL have turned off heating for many instruments in the hope that the rover’s batteries won’t be completely depleted.
Plucky Mars rovers on the move again New Scientist
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.
Mars rover works its way out of crater
NASA’s Opportunity rover is slowly but surely hauling itself out of a vast Martian crater after nearly a year plumbing the interior for secrets of the Red Planet’s ancient past.
Opportunity will take the same route it used to enter Victoria Crater on Sept. 11, 2007, after a year of scouting from the rim. Engineers want the rover to make a graceful exit after seeing an electric current spike in its left front wheel — a reminder of a similar spike that occurred when its robotic twin Spirit lost use of a front right wheel in 2006.
“If Opportunity were driving with only five wheels, like Spirit, it probably would never get out of Victoria Crater,” said Bill Nelson, a rover mission manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “We also know from experience with Spirit that if Opportunity were to lose the use of a wheel after it is out on the level ground, mobility should not be a problem.”
Martian air once had moisture, new soil analysis says UC Berkeley
A new analysis of Martian soil data led by University of California, Berkeley, geoscientists suggests that there was once enough water in the planet’s atmosphere for a light drizzle or dew to hit the ground, leaving tell-tale signs of its interaction with the planet’s surface. The study’s conclusion breaks from the more dominant view that the liquid water that once existed during the red planet’s infancy came mainly in the form of upwelling groundwater rather than rain. To come up with their conclusions, the UC Berkeley-led researchers used published measurements of soil from Mars that were taken by various NASA missions: Viking 1, Viking 2, Pathfinder, Spirit and Opportunity. These five missions provided information on soil from widely distant sites surveyed between 1976 and 2006.
Mars Impactor: Rovers at the Ready Live Science
That possible impact of an asteroid on Mars at the end of January would be quite a show for the orbiters and rovers now on duty at the red planet.
I asked Steve Squyres – lead scientist of the Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers at Cornell — what he thought might be observable by the robots – at that time, in their fourth year of operations.
“If an impact takes place, the most likely thing for us to observe would be dust that has been lofted into the atmosphere by the impact event and then carried over the rover sites by wind,” Squyres said. “So if there is an impact, we’ll increase our monitoring of dust in the atmosphere to see if we can observe any effects.”
Mars rover crippled and blinded as instruments fail New Scientist
NASA’s Opportunity rover has been crippled and blinded by problems with two of its most important instruments. The agency has suspended work involving the rover’s rock grinding tool and its infrared spectrometer while engineers try to work out a fix.
The problems are the latest in a long line of failures that have begun to plague both rovers as they age.
Opportunity and its twin, Spirit, were designed to last just 90 days. But they have been driving around the Red Planet for nearly 4 years, having landed in January 2004.
NASA Scopes Winter Homes for Mars Rovers
The Mars Exploration Rovers have weathered two drab winters on the Martian surface, and mission managers are already looking ahead to yet a third chilly season. All this from a mission that was only designed to last 90 days.
The Spirit rover is searching for a spot to stick it out during the upcoming Martian winter, which will last from March 2008 through October 2008, according to a statement from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
Although Mars has a tilt similar to Earth’s, Martian seasons last longer because the planet takes almost twice as long to circle the Sun—almost 687 Earth days.
After Dust Storms, Mars Rover Set to Enter Giant Crater
After surviving near fatal dust storms on Mars, NASA’s Opportunity rover is gearing up for its long-awaited trek inside an expansive crater on the red planet’s surface.
Opportunity could begin descending down into Mars’ giant Victoria Crater by Sept. 11 after spending two months hunkered down to wait out sunlight-blotting storms that nearly starved the solar-powered rover and its robotic twin, Spirit. The rover spent this week rolling ever closer to entry point into Victoria Crater.
“Opportunity might be ready for that first ‘toe dip’ into the crater as early as next week,” said John Callas, project manager for the Mars rover mission at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, in a Friday statement.