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Mars Rover Reaches Victoria Crater

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the what-a-long-strange-trip-it's-been dept.

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.

3 of 187 comments (clear)

  1. Events such as this restore my faith in Humanity by arcite · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

  2. Re:US vs China by Moridineas · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  3. Re:Events such as this restore my faith in Humanit by eln · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.