Alphecca: Still Going...

January 01, 2006

Still Going...

The pink bunny should be so lucky. From Yahoo/AP:

The warranty expired long ago on NASA's twin robots motoring around Mars. These two golf cart-sized vehicles were only expected to last three months.

In two years, they have traveled a total of seven miles. Not impressed? Try keeping your car running in a climate where the average temperature is 67 below zero and where dust devils can reach 100 mph.

"These rovers are living on borrowed time. We're so past warranty on them," says Steven Squyres of Cornell University, the Mars mission's principal researcher. "You try to push them hard every day because we're living day-to-day."

The rover Spirit landed on Mars on Jan. 3, 2004, and Opportunity followed on Jan. 24. Since then, they've set all sorts of records and succeeded in the mission's main assignment: finding geologic evidence that water once flowed on Mars.

Part of the reason for their long survival is pure luck. Their lives were extended several times by dust devils that blew away dust that covered their solar panels, restoring their ability to generate electricity.

As you know, I read a lot of SF. As you can guess, I worship the few, underfunded feeble missions our country still makes to explore our solar system and the universe around us. I wish people would realize that the only thing that seperates man from apes is that we have a sense of wonder, a need to explore, a desire to look ahead. The few paltry dollars we spend on the space program are our only legacy to putting boring, mundane matters aside and pushing the limits of our knowledge ahead.

For more about what the rovers are up to, visit here.

Man, if I was a kid now I'd be doing everything I could to educate myself and train for a career in space. Science Fiction come to life!

Posted by Jeff Soyer at January 1, 2006 02:31 PM

Comments

Those Damn Apes! There are way too many simiansd among us who wish for no less than total govvernment funded ape-security and life in the Big Nanny Brother Zoo.

Posted by: -keith in mtn. view at January 1, 2006 10:01 PM

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Into science fiction? Check out my group blog novel, Colony: Alchibah.
See the reader's guide there for first-timer tips.

Alphecca

Check it out: My group sci-fi blog novel: Colony: Alchibah

January 01, 2006

Still Going...

By Golly, you're reading an archived post. Click Here to head to the main page and read current stuff...

Check it out:

My group sci-fi blog novel:

Colony: Alchibah