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13 January 2009
5 Years on Mars!
The twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity landed on Mars five years ago this month, and they’re still going strong! Not bad for a mission that was supposed to last three months! To celebrate, NASA has released a cool video with rover team members, including principal investigator Steve Squyres reflecting on the mission, and a podcast with rover project manager John Callas. As we “speak”, the rover team is holding a …
8 January 2009
Early Birthday Present from Opportunity
The Opportunity rover will be celebrating its 5th birthday on Mars later this month, but as an early treat a shiny new panorama was just released. This panorama was taken in late November while the sun was between Mars and the Earth, cutting off communications. It shows the beautiful layered bedrock and undulating ripples that Opportunity is studying on its way to the giant crater Endeavor. Click the images below …
7 January 2009
Rover Driver Blog!
To celebrate the 5 earth-year anniversary of Spirit’s langing on Mars, Scott Maxwell, one of the rover drivers at JPL has begun a blog called “Mars and Me”. In it, he is posting his daily notes from back in the early days of the mission when everyone was living on Mars time. It’s really interesting to hear what it was like early in the from an engineer’s point of view, …
11 November 2008
Spirit Hit by Dust Storm
Just when things were looking up for Spirit and we had begun driving, over the weekend we got news from the MARCI team that there was a dust storm headed toward Gusev crater. Sure enough, Spirit is being hit hard and power levels are at an all-time low. Here’s the NASA press release. But after five years the rover team knows what it’s doing. There was an emergency set of …
10 November 2008
Mars Art Galleries!
Apparently I am not the only person who has had the idea of posting “artistic” images of Mars! In the past week I’ve come across two sites with collections of Mars Art images. So in lieu of posting my own image this week, I’ll point you to these sites who had the idea before me! First is a site by Jim Plaxco called simply the Mars Art Gallery. It has …
2 October 2008
Carnival of Space #73 – NASA Birthday Edition
NASA is legendary for its numerous and sometimes unnecessary acronyms. (My personal favorite is IDD – instrument deployment device, also known as the arm on the MER rovers.) That’s why it is fitting that this week’s carnival of space is one huge acronym commemorating NASA’s birthday! Go check it out at Alice’s Astro Info!
22 September 2008
Opportunity on the Road Again
The Opportunity rover is out of Victoria crater and is on the road again. The destination? A huge 22km (13.7 mile) diameter crater, dubbed “Endeavor”, about 12 km to the southeast. Opportunity was designed to live for at least 90 martian days (sols) and drive about 800 m. Today is sol 1658 and Opportunity has so far driven about 12 km (11,797.91 meters, to be precise). It’s not certain that …
31 August 2008
Mars Rovers Twitter!
Following the lead of their younger, hipper cousin Phoenix, the Rovers now have their own Twitter page. Check it often to get the latest rover news!
29 August 2008
Opportunity Update: Out of Victoria!
It’s offical: Opportunity is out of Victoria crater and back on level ground for the first time in almost a year. Next up, the rover will take a look at some cobbles: rocks strewn about the plains of meridiani by distant impacts. For more detail, check out the JPL press release.
27 August 2008
Opportunity Update: Leaving Victoria Crater
JPL just put out a press release confirming the plan that the rover team has been aware of for a while now: Opportunity is on its way out of Victoria crater. After a lot of frustratingly difficult driving toward the crater wall at Cape Verde, we have tons of awesome images of the layers in the rock but were unable to get close enough to reach out and touch it. …
