Spirit Marks One Martian Year

hrayr writes to tell us NASA is reporting that Spirit, their proclaimed "wonder child", sent to explore Mars has just wrapped up its first Martian year, equivalent to two Earth years. Originally designed to only last 90 days the small six wheeled machine has lasted far beyond the original scope to bring us immense amounts of data and some 70,000 images. There is still great hope that this data, and more to come will bring us one step closer to Mars habitation.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Linux :-) http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7570

Well done NASA

[Dr. Eggman]

It is nice to see successes of NASA for a change. Hopefully, NASA's just in a slump now and we'll see more grand successes like the Mars rovers. First thing is first, lets bridge the shuttle gap with a Soyuz (spelling?) like craft for the purpose of moving materials and people to the space station so we can get that finished. Then, while thats happening they need keep working on designs for longer range reusable veichles like a hybrid between the Apollo setup and the shuttle so we can start working on reaching Mars and maybe hitting the moon again. I think there is still alot of geologic information we can gleen from the moon, especially if we can just drill down a little further. Along with the reusable "mothership" like craft should be smaller, cheaper one time delivery units assembled onsite at the spacestation using materials shipped up in small quantities with other cargo/passengers to the space station. These would be to drop off equipment need for experiments and studies on the moon/mars. But, I'm sure NASA knows what they're doing and I have no doubt they'll accomplish their goals.

Re:Not to be a cynic

[exi1ed0ne]

Aside from all the hard science things we've learned that may not be immediatly exploitable, we now know there is water. At an insane cost per pound to throw stuff out the gravity well, any resources you don't have to take with you reduce the mission scopr a lot. Think about it - extra fuel to boost the water, extra fuel to boost the extra fuel, ad nausium.

I've read (too lazy to find a link) they've even figured out how to make fuel for the return flight from elements the atmosphere. That's some amazing stuff. Six months there, six months back, and a year on the planet is the minimum time a human mission would need to make the trip worthwhile. If we don't find resources there, then the mission would be one way or no way.

Geologic knowledge about what resources there present and how easy it will be to extract them is essential to the sucess of a human mission. Right now that knowledge can only be retained from robot explorers. It's limited, but they answer one question: What do we need for humand to be sucessful there?