I want to send out a hearty CONGRATS to the brilliant engineers and scientists on the Mars rover team: Spirit just passed it’s 900th sol (Martian day) on the Red Planet. It was designed to last for only 90 sols, so it has endured for a solid factor of 10 times what the original specs called for. When was the last time you had a device last 900% longer than the warranty? I had a router blow out last night that I bought just a few months ago, and it’s not sitting on a planet millions of kilometers away, weathering sandstorms and subzero temperatures.
The other rover, Opportunity, will have its 900th sol in a couple of weeks.
Wow. Smart people: gotta love ‘em.
July 26th, 2006 at 12:39 pm
That is truely impressive. No one can claim that they didn’t get their money’s worth for those two I’d say.
July 26th, 2006 at 1:02 pm
Well, my Nintendo is still working! But even then, my harddrive died last week, I had it for just a few months. It seems the more technology advances, the less time it lasts!
Congrats to the teams!
July 26th, 2006 at 1:20 pm
i read squyres’ book, and it’s incredible how hard it was for him to push this through the NASA beuracracy. even up to launch day, there were people who wanted to delay it until 2005.
i’m sure some of them are certainly getting tired by now, though…
July 26th, 2006 at 1:50 pm
Used the same image for my own eeeee-ville shill purposes.
All of my videogame systems are still functioning. Only problems: 1: SNES RF switch that had to be replaced. 2: SNES that got broke, and magically fixed itself after a repair place failed in their efforts and I bought a replacement. 3: Original monochrome Game Boy with one horizontal line of dead pixels near the bottom of the screen.
Original NES still runs fine, though I have to stick the cartridges in at just the right depth for them to work.
July 26th, 2006 at 2:18 pm
So the Mars rovers are fabluous, but I want to point out that if you wanted your router to perform as well as a NASA product, it would cost you $90M and take an act of Congress in a year that George Bush is not in office.
July 26th, 2006 at 2:47 pm
I bought a new connector for my NES on ebay no more problems.
July 26th, 2006 at 4:05 pm
That deserves a Batman sound-effects salute!
pow!
bam! biff!
zing!
July 26th, 2006 at 5:07 pm
Now of only our Martionauts will have the same luck with their equipment.
But then again if their equipment breaks, they can just decomission the nearest Mars rover for spare parts.
It’s a shame Duracell didn’t sponser the Mars Rovers, they would have finally been able to replace their bunny!
Is there any talk of sending more rovers to Mars? I think after the success they’ve had with these two, it would be adventageous to survey more of the planet knowing how much data they could potentially collect on various regions. Especially if they’re looking for better potential landing sites when we do someday have to decide where to land a human on Martian soil.
July 26th, 2006 at 5:09 pm
Ugh, sigh, I wish there was a “preview” option. I’m, sadly, becoming yet another poor typist that everybody else on the ‘net seems to be turning into.
July 26th, 2006 at 5:31 pm
It would be funny if someone made a parody of an Enegizer commercial but with one of the rovers beating a drum instead of the bunny. Still Going. Being solar powered though really what’s to stop them. The lucky part has been the dust devil cleaining crews for the solar panels, other than that the landing was really the only peril. I think we’ll get another 18 months out of one or both of them anyway.
July 26th, 2006 at 6:15 pm
It would be cool if we could actually give them some sort of a classy “Congrats” signed by you, Fraser, and several hundred of the other bauters.
Till then. CONGRATS!!! Yeah Ha!
July 26th, 2006 at 8:24 pm
The closest thing to that was a TI-99 4/A computer. It was pitiful by today’s standards for PCs, but it still functioned after over 10 years (even used it to help with homework).
My mom got rid of it shortly after we got a new PC, one more powerful, and more prone to crash. Figures….
Anyway, kudos to the folks involved with the MERs that kept them going for all this time. Here’s to even more explorations!
July 26th, 2006 at 8:35 pm
I remember watching the landings live on NASA TV a couple years ago, and how excited the ground crew & others were. (I, too, was shouting with glee when the first signals confirming landing came through, and was awestruck when the first pics were processed.) To this day, whenever I see Mars in the night sky, I think about how awesome it is that the two rovers are still, well, roving up there.
These kind of success stories are what should be reported in the news more often, instead of all the “another failure for NASA” ones that seem to make the headlines.
July 26th, 2006 at 8:46 pm
Now there’s value for money! What fraction of the distance to Mars could they have sent a three astronauts for that price?
July 26th, 2006 at 9:27 pm
Congrats to the MER Team! But Pioneer 10 still holds the record. It functioned for thirty years in its two-year mission.
July 27th, 2006 at 2:23 am
Maybe this is what we can expect of life-expectancy, when going to Mars…
July 27th, 2006 at 3:33 am
I remember seeing the rovers up-close in the JPL assembly hall. So cool to know they are still roaming around on Mars!
July 27th, 2006 at 6:40 am
900 Sol? I’ve had shoes that didn’t last that long, and that wasn’t in as harsh an environment as Mars. Dang Reeboks.
This revives my trust in NASA. Although, I did read that there’s a drawback to the Rover’s extended life. They’re having to postpone other projects because of it. Sometimes, you just can’t win.
July 27th, 2006 at 7:02 am
It’s all victory. Humans need to explore, to get out there and blaze new trails, to see things, and to know more. Nothing in my lifetime will inspire me like our space programs, and as grounded as I am in reality, it is the one thing about our existence that I see as truly transcendant — we will get beyond our planet some day, and reach the stars. Nothing can be a greater goal for our species than that, and we need to continue to pressure our government to make it a reality sooner rather than later.
July 27th, 2006 at 7:25 am
Ian B Gibson Says:
“Now there’s value for money! What fraction of the distance to Mars could they have sent a three astronauts for that price?”
That’s exactly right. A couple of years ago I was conversing with some die-hard astronaut-philes on the relative value of astronauts vs probes. One guy uttered the much overused, derisive mantra, “The Mars rovers accomplished in two weeks what a trained field geologist can do in two hours.”
I pointed out that the Mars rovers had accomplished in two weeks what no field geologist has ever done, and may not be in a position to do for another one or two decades.
July 27th, 2006 at 7:28 am
Berlie Says:
“900 Sol? I’ve had shoes that didn’t last that long,…”
Harlan Ellison was on the Tom Snyder show once in which he quipped, “I have shirts older than my girlfriend.”
July 27th, 2006 at 7:31 am
Darn! Who do these NASA engineers think they are? Romans? Next thing you know, they’ll be building bridges and roads,,,
Ah, redundency, thanks for the long life,,,
So, when we get around to building Power Satellites they should last trouble free for around 2000 years??? Cool! Where’s my checkbook? That’s an investment with real potential.
Gary 7
July 27th, 2006 at 8:56 am
Mark Martin, I’ll have to remember that one. I can relate, but I hope my wife doesn’t find out.
July 27th, 2006 at 9:34 am
I got 240,000 miles out of an old Yamaha I had, but nothing like that! Oh, those clever engineers!
July 27th, 2006 at 10:04 am
Mark Martin says: One guy uttered the much overused, derisive mantra, ‘The Mars rovers accomplished in two weeks what a trained field geologist can do in two hours.’”
Does anyone remember that it was Sean O’Keefe (former administrator of NASA) who said something similar on TV not long after the Rovers were on the surface. If I remember correctly his version was something like: “A manned mission could do in 90 minutes what the Rover will do in 90 days.”
Even if this were true, what is the multiplier to go from an unmanned mission to a manned mission with the same goals?
Was it just an outsider’s impression or was O’Keefe a genuine jerk?
July 27th, 2006 at 10:21 am
Hi Jim,
It might’ve been O’Keefe who uttered the original version of that quote. And you’re right, the cost of putting a geologist on Mars would be orders of magnitude higher than what’s being spent currently.
Now of course, I do hope to see people exploring Mars on foot in my lifetime. I have no idealogical problem with it. But it’s a fact: modern remote probes allow us to explore the planets now, instead of after we’re all dead.
A real irony of the hardline pro-astronaut camp is that once astronauts do walk on Mars, what will those astronauts do? They’ll operate scientific instruments. But that’s what’s being done already. The rovers are on Mars, carrying scientific instruments, which are being operated by people.
July 27th, 2006 at 1:21 pm
If you want power tools that last don’t buy the Sears, Black&Decker, etc. store brands. I learned a long time ago, that it is well worth buying the industrial quality tool even though they often cost 5X more.
I think Bosch has the best routers but Milwaukee, Ridgid and Porter-Cable all make good equipment. If you buy the best, you only have to buy it once.
July 28th, 2006 at 7:45 am
Erm. They don’t project rovers for 90 days. They project rovers to last AS LONG AS POSSIBLE. 90 days was given for monetary reasons (next 90 sols = some more milions $ to operate rovers) and as a worst-case scenario.
July 30th, 2006 at 11:00 pm
That was really a remarkable feet of the rover on mars. It gives scientists more details to study the martian topology etc, which will help them when they reach out to mars by 2017.