They keep going...and Going...and.....
 

Two years ago....we landed rovers on Mars for a three month excursion,they are still there.

Just thought I would remind everyone....damn cool stuff

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 well below zero and where dust devils can reach 100 mph.

http://edition.cnn.com/2006/TECH/spa...ars.rovers.ap/

It's amazing how they fix them from down here on Earth....and I get crabby if I have to wait five minutes to test a coding fix. :rolleyes:

Did you guys see some of those new flying robots they are going to try and send on another mission?

I love stories like this: The achievement reached by having this stuf on Mars will help humanity in the advancement of pure science.

I wonder if the engineering team that designed the rovers got some kind of bonus. The stuff built lasted longer than 10 times expected. To me, that is like building the fucking pyramids.

Good job, you nameless engineering geeks!

Aren't they kinda small as well, as compared to say, a car? Seven miles doesn't seem that unimpressive, really.

Any complex machine with moving parts that runs for two years without the touch of a human hand is, well, impressive. The article states that scientists thought that the Mars environment would be hard on the 'bots than it actually turned out to be, so they built 'em 'way tough. And that paid off.

Of course, the fact that the martian dust devils keep dust from building up on the 'bots' solar cells is blind luck, but I'll take it.

Frankly, 'bots do a better and cheaper job of exploring the solar system than men could, for the foreseeable future. More 'bots! More 'bots!

As for the engineering team getting a bonus -- probably not. But the bragging rights and resume cred will be priceless to their careers.

Well maybe when compared to a car, they are about half of the length of an average car, 7.5 feet long and 4.9 feet tall and weigh 384 pounds. I would say not small but if you want to compare it to a car they are small, however not tiny by any means.

My car has almost 150k miles, and it's from Saturn, much farther away than Mars.

This made me smile in the article:


"Last spring, Opportunity got stuck hub-deep in sand while trying to crest a foot-high dune, and was freed after weeks of effort by the Earth-bound engineers."


I just imagined the engineers sitting there with a little joystick going, forward...reverse...forward...reverse...forward............. :D