Mars Rovers Moving After Winter Hibernation

jcasman writes to mention an article at Astronomy.com discussing the now on-the-move Mars rovers, which have been effectively in hibernation over the long Martian winter. Spirit has been stationary in the Columbia Hills area, just barely powered up and taking the finest panoramic shot of the planet to date. On the other side of the world, Opportunity has been skulking around the Victoria crater. Scientists have been getting to know the area before attempting to send Opportunity into the geographical feature itself. "Opportunity now is traversing Victoria's rim, and mission scientists are naming features they find after places visited by Ferdinand Magellan and his crew during the first circumnavigation of Earth. (Victoria Crater itself is named after the lone ship that completed Magellan's quest.) [Steve Squyres of Cornell University] and his team are committed to driving Opportunity into the crater eventually, if they're sure the rover will be safe -- in other words, that they can get it out again. Squyres is confident they can, and he thinks it will be sooner rather than later."

Comments

McMurdo Panorama

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's that finest panoramic shot in Quicktime VR format: http://www.fotoausflug.de/en-mars.html

Re:Solar system rovers

[SageMusings]

It's a lot colder on those distant Jovian and Saturnian moons and the amount of sunlight would not be enough to charge the alreay too cold batteries.

We would need a new design.

Re:WDFD!

[karnal]

I wonder what might happen when they drive the rover into the crater. If the end up driving it somewhere where this isn't much of a wind, will the solar panels get covered in dust and stop working? Another thought would be: If there isn't much of a wind, is there any dust being kicked up?

Re:Too Cautious

[Kjella]

Because short of finding life on Mars, the rovers are more important than exploring yet another crater. Every so often the press lacks a good article, and they end up giving NASA some good press, "birthdays", going into hibernation, coming out of hibernation, anything. Right now milking that record for everything it's worth is probably the smartest thing they can do. After all, they must have run out of primary targets, secondary targets and tertiary targets by now, they're just making it up as they go along. They can cruise along the flattest plains they can find until something eventually breaks, and it'll still be a huge success. "Mars rovers record run over because NASA drove it stuck in a crater" is just about the only "WTF can't you do this right?" mistake they can make at this point.