Five and a half years after they were supposed to be history,
the Mars Exploration Rovers celebrated their sixth Earth year on
the Red Planet with Opportunity pulling up to a fresh, new crater
on the road to Endeavour, and Spirit working on repositioning
itself to settle in for the coming Martian winter, and perhaps the
rest of its mission.
Spirit and Opportunity
Spirit arrived at Gusev Crater at 8:35 p.m. Pacific Standard
Time (PST) January 3, 2004 as more than one billion people
worldwide jammed online to "witness" the Internet's biggest live
event. Opportunity landed three weeks later on the plains of
Meridiani Planum at 9:05 p.m. PST January 24, 2004, and millions
more people cheered in countries everywhere. "They are emissaries
not just of NASA or the United States, but the Earth," Steve
Squyres, MER principal investigator, of Cornell University, said
then.
The rovers had flown into the Martian atmosphere and breezed
through the six minutes of terror that followed, making it look
easy and succeeding, against all odds, where most others before
them had failed. Bouncing down onto the surface protected by
airbags, they landed flawlessly and intact, Spirit upright and
unscathed in amidst a jagged landscape, Opportunity rolling into a
crater to score Earth's first "300-million-mile hole-in-one."
The twin robot field geologists got to work promptly seeking to
fulfil the primary objective of finding evidence for past water on
a mission designed to last for three months, and, if things went
really well, six months max. After accomplishing their mission
objective, Spirit and Opportunity both roved on and on and on.
Voor videobeelden van 'Spirit' klikt u hier. Voor 'Opportunity' klikt u hier.
Met dank aan: The Planetary Society