Hi
The subject of this post really doesn't need an introduction, it is of course the world famous Mars exploration rovers. Spirit and Opportunity.
I'm sure you are all familiar with the rovers, but for the benefit of those who don't I will give a quick overview. Spirit and Opportunity were the follow ons from the successful Mars pathfinder mission. They were launched in 2003 and arrived at Mars in 2004. There mission was to search for interesting Geological features that indicate past water on Mars, they had an expected 90 days to do this (a little out)!
The Twin spacecraft are roughly the size of a small golf cart and cost roughly 820 million US dollars to build and launch! To complete their surface mission the rovers were given all the equipment a Human geologist would want. They therefore have a microscope, a tool for cutting rocks, a instrument that analyses the chemicals of soil,panoramic cameras and many more with very long anagrams. In short seeing as we are unable to put a human geologist on Mars, these rovers provide the next best thing.
After there 18 month journey the rovers were ready to land. This is a dangerous process and as been rightly called the seven minutes of Terror. The rovers entered the atmosphere separately landing on different sides of the planet. As they entered the heat shield protected the craft from breaking up. Then a few miles above the surface the parachutes opened slowing the craft further. Finally a few hundred feet above the surface the air bags inflated and the rover was dropped! I find this hard to believe a incredibly expensive rover just dropped, all it had to cushion the blow was a layer of air bags. Both rovers sustained about 10 bounces
on the surface before finally coming to rest. They had landed the surface mission could begin. Hopefully you should be able to see a map showing where the rovers landed. The colours indicate height. After setting of spirit and opportunity were intended to drive roughly 1 km in there 90 days. Now as I am sure you know they exceeded that and are currently entering there 5 year!
The rest of my post is going to be on the lifetime of these remarkable rovers. At writing 17.4.09 the rovers are currently working well, there have been one or two failures due to wear and tear ( Wheel jams) but overall they are both still working. Opportunity is currently heading for a massive crater a couple of miles away from it's current location and, Spirit is just reawakening from a survived Martian winter.
At the moment there is no indication that they will fail any time soon so Long live spirit and opportunity. I wish I could provide more info on the surface mission but the blog doesn't have enough space. If you want more information check out this website.
Kyle
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