Long-lived Mars Rovers to Keep on Roving

An anonymous reader writes with a link to a ComputerWorld article about the ongoing saga of the Martian rovers. They've overcome amazing obstacles and they show no signs of shutting down any time soon. "'After more than three and a half years, Spirit and Opportunity are showing some signs of aging, but they are in good health and capable of conducting great science,' John Callas, rover project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a statement. Since landing, the rovers have had to surmount a host of technical issues. Just a few weeks after landing, the Spirit rover had an out-of-memory problem that almost ended its mission before it began, but scientists were able to get the rover back into operation. In April 2004, both needed software updates to correct problems and improve their performance."

Comments

I've got an idea

[ILuvRamen]

When they're done with the rover projects and they finally die, they should put the team to work on fixing Vista. Then we might actually get somewhere. If they can get a rover out of a crator like a bajillion miles away without being able to see it, they can get us to be able to copy more than 46,000 files or whatever lol.