It's the 10th anniversary of the Mars Exploration Rovers and one is still working today!

[Kablooie]

It was inconceivable that a rover mission designed for 90 days of operation would still be operating after a decade in the harsh environment of the Red Planet's frigid surface. In spite of our limited human imagination, the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity is still functioning and exploring ten years after landing on Mars. For a decade now, the rover has been dutifully conducting field geology on the Martian surface day after day. Opportunity and her twin Spirit have traversed great plains, climbed mountains, descended into deep craters and survived rover-killing dust storms and frigid winters. As the rovers move, each day becomes a brand new mission with new sights, new geology and new opportunities to explore. The rovers have made significant scientific discoveries in understanding the Red Planet, finding evidence of past habitable environments that could possibly have supported life. Although Spirit's mission concluded after an unimaginable six years, exciting adventures of exploration still lie ahead for the still very capable Opportunity rover even after ten years.


http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/events/lectures_archive.php?year=2014&month=1

[Warren DeMontague]

1. Yeah, who says Americans can't build stuff, anymore?

Amazing. Simply amazing.

[Kablooie]

2. That little rod on the square sticking up on it's tail ...

is a sundial put there by none other than Bill Nye the Science Guy!

It is also used to measure the shadow color for environmental photo color correction.

[Warren DeMontague]

3. Awesome.

Yeah, the pictures have gotten better and better.

I'm old enough to remember when the Viking images first came in, and how oddly orange they were... Turns out the calibration was off, IIRC, and figuring out what Mars "really" looks like was a trickier problem than you would think.

[Kablooie]

4. Yep. That's exactly what Bill Nye said and why it's on the rovers.

[Fumesucker]

5. Made me think of this cartoon

[jakeXT]

6. Opportunity: 10 Years on Mars (86 minutes)

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/42795898

Opportunity: 10 Years on Mars
Exploration rovers, Spirit and Opportunity.

Event participants include:
-- Charles Elachi, director, JPL
-- Steve Squyres, principal investigator, Mars Exploration Rover mission, Cornell
-- John Callas, project manager, Mars Exploration Rover mission, JPL
-- Bill Nye, chief executive officer of the Planetary Society, Pasadena, Calif.
-- plus more rover team members