Mars Rover Reaches Victoria Crater

gevmage writes, "CNN reports that the 'Opportunity' rover on Mars has reached the Victoria crater. The rovers Spirit and Opportunity arrived on Mars three years ago with planned mission lifetime of 90 days. The rover Spirit is wounded, having only 5 of 6 wheels functioning, and so it's moving quite slowly. However, Opportunity is still going strong and has been trucking towards the massive crater Victoria for almost the past year. Scientists have been hoping that Opportunity would get there so they can have a look at geologically older areas — and it's finally made it!" See the NASA press release for links to photos of the Victoria crater.

Comments

Events such as this restore my faith in Humanity

[arcite]

Space really is the final frontier. News stories like this never cease to brighten up my day, and give me hope for the future. Not to sound too corny, but do others find this is true?

Victoria's Secreat no more

[Anonymous Coward]

Once the rover reaches the Victoria Crater, that will an end to Victoria's Secret!

thats what he said

[coldtone]

"We don't have major discoveries every week. But we do expect some major new discoveries when we get inside Victoria,"

Add an " 's "

[mhokie]

Add an 's to get "Mars Rover Reaches Victoria's Crater" and you get the title of a well worn "video" I used to own.

Re:US vs China

[Moridineas]

Just out of curiosity--by what standards exactly, is China "making the US look pretty bad" in space tech?

They've managed--using Russian derivative technology--to put one man into space. Nothing shoddy, true, however the US and Russia each, with completely new technologies, doing something never done before, put people into space over 45 years ago. We put men on the moon about 35 years ago.

I'm all in favor of furthering space exploration, and China is a very welcome addition to the frame (I hope their involvement makes us go to the moon again frankly). Saying that they make NASA look bad though is ludicrous and ill-informed.

Re:Score one for NASA

[nairnr]

I had to laugh when I went to the Mission page. They have the Mission days listed in Sols, as well as the Sols Past Warranty!

This mission has been such a great success. I think it has fallen off the radar of most people who don't realize that they are still out there. NASA needs some better PR to capitalize on great science. NASA needs credit where credit is due, not for the ISS, but for true exploration.

Re:Events such as this restore my faith in Humanit

[eln]

Based on NASA's 2007 budget request, we could fund it for more than 100 years on what we've spent on the war in Iraq so far. We could fund it for 260 years with the money we've spent on the Defense Department in 2006. We could fund it for almost 300 years with the money Bush gave back in tax cuts for the richest 1%. The amount of money the Medicare Drug Plan is projected to cost over the next 10 years could fund NASA for 560 years.

NASA is not the first place you should be looking for answers to the government's budget problems.

Re:These are some tough robots

[gevmage]

That's an good question. When the PI for the project spoke at University of Illinois, someone asked that.

He said that basically having yet another moving part just wouldn't end up being worth the expense of engineering it and adding the weight to the rover and the launch vehicle.

The next rover that will be launched in a few years will have a plutonium oxide power source, so that the power won't be a factor.

Actually, dust on the panels isn't the only issue. Eventually the mechanical parts wear out, get dirt in them, so they don't work. Spirit is running on 5 of 6 wheels now. The PI said that if it loses another one, then it probably won't ever be able to move again. That is, the solar panels are fine, the computers and instruments are fine, but if one more motor goes out, then it's limited to what it can do in a stationary position.

Pacifist Socialists don't make it to space ...

[AHumbleOpinion]

Have you noticed that the countries with the largest militaries are the one's with the most capable space programs? Have you noticed that the countries with socialized medicine and minimal military are not in space, or they largely piggy back on the former? I think things are a bit more complex than you suggest. Now I'm all for greatly increasing NASA's funding, but getting rid of the Pentagon will do more harm to NASA than good. The place to cut the budget is all the damn pork projects that do nothing other than get incumbants re-elected. Some of these are in the Pentagon, but many are outside of it. Pork is one of the few things conservatives and liberals agree on.

"The most expensive thing in the world is a second-best military establishment, good but not good enough to win."
Robert A. Heinlein