Five years ago on Saturday, the Mars rover Spirit touched down on Mars in a bundle of airbags, beginning a saga of robotic exploration that has delighted NASA scientists and the public alike. The second rover, Opportunity, arrived on the other side of the planet a few weeks later, on January 21. Combined, the rovers have made more than 13 miles of tracks on Mars’ dusty surface and sent a quarter-million images back to Earth. Their instruments have uncovered evidence that Mars was once a far wetter and warmer place than the frigid, dusty world it is now [AP].
The rovers were designed to last at least 90 days on the Red Planet, but NASA had hopes that the robots would exceed their warranty and keep on trucking. However, few expected Spirit and Opportunity to last half a decade in the punishing conditions of Mars. As for what comes next, nobody really knows, says rover project manager John Callas: “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” [BBC News].

With
The next robotic explorer in NASA’s ambitious
A new intelligent pill designed by
Just after
Honda’s
One of the teams competing for the $20 million top prize in the
Five sophisticated 
Engineers have designed a 
The
Bumblebees that have a close encounter with a dangerous predator are still cautious and wary the next day, even though their trepidation slows them down as they forage for food. In a new study, researchers used robot spiders to briefly trap the
Small
A man who was 