QuoteDespite NASA's best efforts to wake her, Mars Exploration Rover Spirit remains silent on the Red Planet's surface. It's been a whole year since we last heard from the little wheeled robot and hope has all but faded for her revival.
For the next month, NASA will continue to listen out for Spirit, but after that time search operations will be scaled back to focus on sister rover Opportunity. Opportunity continues her marathon drive to Endeavour Crater, over seven years since she landed on Mars.
http://news.discovery.com/space/mars-rover-down-spirit-stays-silent-110329.html
I really hope Spirit calls home, it'd be cool to see how far it can go!
Yeah, so... Howard Wolowitz got this baby stuck when he let some woman he was trying to impress drive it from the lab. At least, if you watch Big Bang Theory :)
Boooo
Quote from: Thorin on March 30, 2011, 09:54:04 AM
Yeah, so... Howard Wolowitz got this baby stuck when he let some woman he was trying to impress drive it from the lab. At least, if you watch Big Bang Theory :)
rofl, wow, I was gonna post pretty much the same thing when I saw this thread title :)
Okay, on a more serious note... Wow, those rovers have been going for a long time! I'm surprised they don't have bigger wheels, though, or even tracks.
And the Tumbleweed Rovers look positively strange.
Quote from: Thorin on March 30, 2011, 01:15:48 PM
Okay, on a more serious note... Wow, those rovers have been going for a long time! I'm surprised they don't have bigger wheels, though, or even tracks.
And the Tumbleweed Rovers look positively strange.
Size and weight limits of the payload for getting them on site apparently are the biggest factors of why all rovers look a little odd. They also use things like fixed hard wheels because inflating on site could fail. Hell they had wipers in the design for the solar panels to keep dust of, but those where dumped.
Payload weight is a big concern when it comes to cost and they were really on a tight budget to get these projects rolling. I'm glad they did though, some amazing data came back (liquid water on Mars baby!)
Next up would be a rover that has better capability for microbiology.