Spirit Outlasts Viking 2 Lander 137
ScottMaxwell writes "Spirit, the Mars rover designed for a 90-day mission, has now outlasted the Viking 2 lander. Viking 2 survived until its 1281st sol (Martian day); Spirit is now on sol 1282 and counting. Assuming both rovers continue to weather the ongoing dust storms, Spirit's sister, Opportunity, will reach the same age in a few weeks. They aren't breathing down the neck of the all-time record just yet, though — the Viking 1 lander lasted 2245 sols on the surface of Mars; Spirit and Opportunity won't break that record for another 2.7 Earth years."
Delete *.* (Score:2, Interesting)
That seems to happen too often in space flight. Everyone remembers the metric conversion, but there is also the "cook battery" command on a recent Mars orbiter death (fortunately, it lasted almost 10 years before the error), and then the Titan probe receiver didn't get the 2nd-channel "on" command, reducing the imaging coverage. Seems like they need better simulators to catch that kind of stuff. (Although in 1977 that's probably asking too much.)
Re:Delete *.* (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, if they gave each command to a terrestrial version of the hardware, and saw how the command played out, the engineers running the mission might have a chance to say "oops, let's not bother to send that one..."
Re:Nuclear powered (Score:1, Interesting)
Yawn: Another broken record (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Nuclear powered (Score:3, Interesting)
JPL Rebadging Controversy (Score:2, Interesting)
I just want to draw attention to the submitter's link:
http://www.hspd12jpl.org/ [hspd12jpl.org]
There's a situation brewing where JPL employees (who are employed by Caltech, not the federal government) will be fired if they do not submit to unprecedented invasions of their privacy. Some other relevant links:
http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/2007/08/hspd12_
http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/2007/05/nasa_jp
http://www.editthis.info/jpl_rebadging/Main_Page [editthis.info]