Mars Rovers Celebrate Their 1000th Sol On Mars

Cherita Chen writes, "Yesterday NASA, Cornell University, and the USGS celebrated the Mars Exploration Rovers' 1000th Sol on the Red Planet. The first rover to land, Spirit, reached the 1000 Sol mark a few weeks ago while the planet was in Solar conjunction. 'Opportunity,' Spirit's twin, and the second lander to make the bounce to Mars, celebrated the milestone yesterday while sitting atop Victoria Crater on the other side of Mars. Both Rovers are still operational (though Spirit is limping) and are sending back valuable data. Not bad for what was slated to be a '90 Sol' mission."

Comments

Sol

[pablodiazgutierrez]

In case you also thought that Sol was the poster's way to say: "see, I can speak Spanish", Wikipedia comes at your rescue:

The term sol is used by planetary astronomers to refer to the duration of a solar day on planets other than Earth (e.g. Mars). A mean Earth solar day is approximately 24 hours. A mean Martian solar day, or "sol", is 24 hours, 39 minutes, and 35.244 seconds.

You're welcome.

wow!

[zxscooby]

I for one welcome our new roving robotic overlords.