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Spirit Rover Reaches Safety

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the go-little-buddy-go dept.

dylanduck writes "Good news for rover fans - Spirit is safe for the winter. It had been heading for a north-tilting spot to make sure its solar panels got enough sunlight during the imminent winter to survive, when a sand trap appeared. But, despite its busted wheel, it scooted round and is now sitting pretty. From the article: 'We've got a safe rover,' says principal investigator Steve Squyres. 'That's huge news for us.'"

5 of 147 comments (clear)

  1. Amazing by networkBoy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I really can not believe that the rovers are still running at all.
    NASA did a bang up job on these. Build more and recover the economies of scale!
    -nB

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    1. Re:Amazing by PeelBoy · · Score: 5, Funny

      They sure as hell lasted a lot longer than any radio controlled toy I ever owned

    2. Re: Amazing by shigelojoe · · Score: 5, Funny

      My guess is that NASA mixed up metric days and imperial days when they were making their lifetime estimates.

  2. I hope it works better than... by sdo1 · · Score: 5, Funny

    ... the windows "hibernate" feature.

    "Ok... wake up"

    "I'm sorry Dave. Everything you were working on is know kaput and I've forgotten about everything that you were doing. By the way, where did that network connection go?"

    --
    --- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
  3. Re:Well now, by ScottLindner · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "and the number of lives taken by the whole space conquest is still lower than the daily death toll of car accidents across the US."

    No doubt.

    Another point about manned and unmanned. The unmanned is great for simple things like this. It can go on and on doing very simple tasks and won't get tired of doing it. The manned flights are for sophisticated situations, but there's another less obvious point. PUshing to get people out there, will develop new technologies in life support that can be used for many other industries both in space, and here at home. Even if we develop great technologies to live in a colony on the moon, or on Mars, we can use those same technologies to extend our stay here on this planet. Since we're doing a good job of burning this one up that cannot support the numbers of people we have.

    I know you are not protesting the manned space flight. I just wanted to comment that there are many great reasons for manned space flight that are less obvious than the per mission benefits of the manned flight itself. It would be very unwise to try to send a man to another galaxy on the first shot, if we never figured out how to do it locally first.

    Cheers,
    Scott

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    Slashdot.. where people join together in deliberate ignorance.