{"id":13389,"date":"2009-01-04T15:46:08","date_gmt":"2009-01-04T22:46:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2009\/01\/04\/happy-anniversary-spirit.html"},"modified":"2009-01-04T15:46:08","modified_gmt":"2009-01-04T22:46:08","slug":"happy_anniversary_spirit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2009\/01\/04\/happy_anniversary_spirit.html","title":{"rendered":"Happy Anniversary, Spirit!"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

The Mars “Spirit” Rover, is celebrating its five year anniversary<\/a>. It was only supposed to operate for three months<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n

These rovers are incredibly resilient considering the extreme environment the hardware experiences every day,” said John Callas, project manager for Spirit and Opportunity at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion laboratory in Pasadena, California.<\/p>\n

“We realise that a major rover component on either vehicle could fail at any time and end a mission with no advance notice, but on the other hand, we could accomplish the equivalent duration of four more prime missions on each rover in the year ahead.”<\/p>\n

Together, the rovers have driven more than 20km, and returned more than 36 gigabytes of data. This has included a quarter of a million images.<\/p>\n

Spirit is exploring a 150km-wide bowl-shaped depression known as Gusev Crater. It has found an abundance of rocks and soils bearing evidence of extensive exposure to water. Opportunity is on the other side of the planet, in a flat region known as Meridiani Planum.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The two rovers are showing their age, but continue to push on. Because of a jammed wheel, Spirit has to drive backwards to go anywhere — but wheel scraping revealed some valuable info about minerals just below the surface dust.<\/p>\n

When NASA manages to do something right, the results are amazing. Spirit and its sister, Opportunity, will have the Mars surface to themselves for a while, though — as both NASA and ESA have both postponed their next Mars probes due to budget issues.<\/p>\n

See also: NASA – Mars Rovers Near Five Years of Science and Discovery<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Mars “Spirit” Rover, is celebrating its five year anniversary. It was only supposed to operate for three months. These rovers are incredibly resilient considering the extreme environment the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[82],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":29043,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/08\/07\/rovers-reviewed.html","url_meta":{"origin":13389,"position":0},"title":"Rovers reviewed","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 7-Aug-12 6:24am","format":false,"excerpt":"Comparing the sizes of the different rovers. \u00a0On the left is Spirit\/Opportunity, in the middle Sojourner, and on the right Curiosity.Reshared post from +Karyn TraphagenWonder how the Mars rovers compare in size? This picture will help!\u00a0This photo also clearly shows the tire tread in Curiosity. See those holes? They not\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9338,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/07\/25\/blood_planets_a.html","url_meta":{"origin":13389,"position":1},"title":"Blood-planet’s a Rover","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 25-Jul-06 7:01pm","format":false,"excerpt":"The Mars Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, have now lasted some ten times longer than was originally inspected.\u00a0 From the tone of the article, it seems the biggest question is whether...","rel":"","context":"In "Science & Nature"","block_context":{"text":"Science & Nature","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/science"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4803,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/01\/04\/get_your_spirit.html","url_meta":{"origin":13389,"position":2},"title":"Get your Spirit to Mars …","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 4-Jan-04 7:37am","format":false,"excerpt":"The NASA Spirit rover is on Mars and transmitting back pictures. Engineers believed Spirit landed smack in the middle of Gusev Crater, a Connecticut-sized basin just south of the martian...","rel":"","context":"In "Science & Nature"","block_context":{"text":"Science & Nature","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/science"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4791,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/01\/05\/get_your_clocks.html","url_meta":{"origin":13389,"position":3},"title":"Get your clocks to Mars!","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 5-Jan-04 11:25am","format":false,"excerpt":"Working on the NASA Spirit Rover team makes for some strange chronological sacrifices in order to stay coordinated with Spirit's reports and with planning its daily operations. [NASA scientist Matt]...","rel":"","context":"In "Science & Nature"","block_context":{"text":"Science & Nature","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/science"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":29011,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/08\/08\/just-in-case-you-forgot-about-that-other-rover-on-mars.html","url_meta":{"origin":13389,"position":4},"title":"Just in case you forgot about that OTHER rover on Mars","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 8-Aug-12 10:44am","format":false,"excerpt":"Extremely cool panorama composite shot from Opportunity. \u00a0Wow. Embedded Link Mars Rover Opportunity Greeley-Haven panorama Google+: Reshared 1 times Google+: View post on Google+","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":27869,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/05\/11\/go-opportunity-go.html","url_meta":{"origin":13389,"position":5},"title":"Go, Opportunity, Go!","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 11-May-12 4:35am","format":false,"excerpt":"Nice to see the remaining rover on the move again. (h\/t +Simon Skiles)Reshared post from +Science, Space & Robots Embedded Link NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity Takes First Drive of 2012 NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity Takes First Drive of 2012. Opportunity Greeley Haven. NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13389\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}