Mars Rover starts its 9th year

[Tank]

Mars Rover starts its 9th year

Eight years after landing on Mars for what was planned as a three-month mission, NASA's enduring Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity is working on what essentially became a new mission five months ago.

Opportunity reached a multi-year driving destination, Endeavour Crater, in August 2011. At Endeavour's rim, it has gained access to geological deposits from an earlier period of martian history than anything it examined during its first seven years. It also has begun an investigation of the planet's deep interior that takes advantage of staying in one place for the martian winter.

Opportunity landed in Eagle Crater on Mars on Jan. 25, 2004, Universal Time and EST (Jan. 24, PST), three weeks after its rover twin, Spirit, landed halfway around the planet. In backyard-size Eagle Crater, Opportunity found evidence of an ancient wet environment. The mission met all its goals within the originally planned span of three months. During most of the next four years, it explored successively larger and deeper craters, adding evidence about wet and dry periods from the same era as the Eagle Crater deposits.

In mid-2008, researchers drove Opportunity out of Victoria Crater, half a mile (800 meters) in diameter, and set course for Endeavour Crater, 14 miles (22 kilometers) in diameter.

"Endeavour is a window further into Mars' past," said Mars Exploration Rover Program Manager John Callas, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

The trek took three years. In a push to finish it, Opportunity drove farther during its eighth year on Mars -- 4.8 miles (7.7 kilometers) -- than in any prior year, bringing its total driving distance to 21.4 miles (34.4 kilometers)...

Talk about a success! What incredible value for money. 

[DeterminedJuliet]

They grow up so fast.

[ladyblackwell]

I was so excited learning about it when I was 10. It's amazing what science and engineering can do!

[Tank]

I was so excited learning about it when I was 10. It's amazing what science and engineering can do!

There is a new much larger mobile lab going up later this year I think. I was 10 when the moon landings happened. There was total obsession with it. The tension as Apollo 11 sank towards the Moon's surface was unbelievable!

[The Magic Pudding]

It's amazing what science and engineering can do!

Actually indigenous Martian robots took pity on the thing and upgraded its systems.
The government of course knows this but they're never going to tell.

[Tank]

It's amazing what science and engineering can do!

Actually indigenous Martian robots took pity on the thing and upgraded its systems.
The government of course knows this but they're never going to tell.

You realise of course that Martians live here in disguise? I'm reliably informed they are red, round and clay like but paint themselves grey to blend in with the natives.

[ladyblackwell]

It's amazing what science and engineering can do!

Actually indigenous Martian robots took pity on the thing and upgraded its systems.
The government of course knows this but they're never going to tell.

You realise of course that Martians live here in disguise? I'm reliably informed they are red, round and clay like but paint themselves grey to blend in with the natives.

But of course. How else could we be plotting the takeover of your planet...I mean using it for valuable research...