Mars Rovers

Does anyone know what happened to the 2 Mars rovers? They were big news then everyone forgot about them.

I havent really stayed up-2-date but last i heard NASA was sending them on a road-trip to other palces on mars.

They are still going along nicely. Spirit is poking around the Columbia hills and Opportunity is sniffing around inside Endurance crater. Both have far exceeded their mission lifespans, so much so that plans are being made to find a good spot to 'park' them for the Mars winter and code changes have been made to both to basically allow an 'off' function for the rovers to shut them down for the winter.

They have even started to see more clouds as winter begins to come on strong. (Opportunity has at least).



Check out marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov... to keep track of mission updates and see the latest images etc. (Or you could join the relevant NASA mailing list, but I don't recall how to off the top of my head).

I enjoy the screensaver. been using it for months.

robotics.nasa.gov...

It updates itself online to provide lastest images

For anyone interested (even slightly) I highly recommend getting that screensaver, it is brilliant. Top find Asclepius.

Well, the media interest has waned, but mine hasn't, I'm still listening to all the briefings and looking at each picture.

I hope that they manage to get Spirit to get a good panorama from the top of the Columbia hills. That would be a great end of this year's mission. I hope they survive the winter, even if the mossbauer will die in the cold.

Even after they have stopped working, I'll still have the lego one on a shelf in my office.

Originally posted by Kano
For anyone interested (even slightly) I highly recommend getting that screensaver, it is brilliant. Top find Asclepius.

no probs. It was actually my university teacher that showed it to me. He used to connect his laptop to the projector to do presentations but leave it on when the screensaver loaded. Once it loaded, no one was listening to him

Leaving out mechanical failure, I read somewhere that it will be a buildup of dust on the photoelectric cells that may finish the rovers.

The dust stops electricity being generated, and they don't have a system to remove it. We just need someone to pop up there with a cloth and give them a wipe sometime

lol. no probs. ill do it tomorrow

So the rovers are going into "stand-by" or are they actually shutting down? Sounds kinda neat though. I bet they will pick up popularity for the news if they survive the winter.

They will do all they can to try to keep the rovers warm enough to wake them back up after winter. But it is not very probable they shall succeed.