NASA Rover Celebrates 5th Birthday On Mars

via Gizmodo UK


Against all the odds, the NASA 'Spirit' rover on Mars has celebrated its 5th birthday on the desolate planet. Life on the dusty Red Planet has been tough for the Spirit and the Opportunity rovers which were originally only expected to last 3 months in the harsh conditions.

The Spirit landed on Mars on January 3, 2004, with the Opportunity dropping in 21 days later. Thanks to their ability to withstand the hostile conditions, the rovers have gathered a massive amount of information, including breakthrough evidence that revealed Mars once had lots of water.

John Callas, project manager for Spirit and Opportunity at NASA's Jet Propulsion laboratory in Pasadena, California, commented:

"These rovers are incredibly resilient considering the extreme environment the hardware experiences every day. 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."

Considering that the Rovers are now in dire need of maintenance - Spirit can only drive backwards due to a jammed wheel and Opportunity's robotic arm won't work because of a severed wire - we may not be having too many more birthdays.

Check out a short video here from NASA with some of the rover engineers discussing the highs and lows of the plucky rovers over the last 5 years.