Rovers May Survive Martian Winter

yokem_55 writes "According to this article on Yahoo News, Mars rover engineers are beginning to consider the possibility that the rovers may be able to survive the oncoming Martian winter in a hibernation mode, and then return to activity when spring returns to the red planet. The article ends with a quote from Steve Squires speculating that, 'we're looking at the final demise of these vehicles perhaps as late as the onset of our second winter on Mars.'"

Comments

Re:Props to NASA

[madprof]

Absolutely. This mission can only be considered an unqualified success. What is most pleasing is the fact that they now have a better idea of how to make future missions work this well too.

Re:Couldn't they think about this sooner?

[Andy Mitchell]

These things are engineered to last a certain ammount of time, as component specifications are generally conservative equipment will often last longer than it was designed for.

Take the voyager 2 probe, this was launched with the intent of exploring Jupier and Saturn. But they managed to extend the mission out to both Neptune and Uranus.

Of course they thought about these posibilities, they chose the launch date such that they could continue their slingshot in that direction :-)

Re:The sweetest sight.

[jwe21]

Try

Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 9000ms, Maximum=10000ms, Average=9100ms