Mars Rover Spirit Still Alive

Toren Altair writes with this excerpt from a story at The Space Fellowship: "NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit communicated via the Mars Odyssey orbiter today right at the time when ground controllers had told it to, prompting shouts of 'She's talking!' among the rover team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. 'This means Spirit has not gone into a fault condition and is still being controlled by sequences we send from the ground,' said John Callas of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., project manager for Spirit and its twin, Opportunity."

Comments

Re:Ummm

[east coast]

Isn't seeing how much longer it will live and the problems it will have just as much science as anything it's doing related to Mars?

Consider that the powers that be decided that the price tag associated with these two gizmos was worth it for the three months worth of science they were going to get out of them. Now that they've lasted roughly 20 times as long that means something went really right, the return on investment is definitely there. But it's just as important to know what they could do better. What are the weaknesses of the system? What systems upheld the best? These systems aren't mass produced like your auto, knowing what is effective and what isn't is just as much science as their original mission. And with the data that we're collecting we're going to make better probes in the future. That's worth the money too.

And yes, I'm sure that they're still doing science based on their original mission too. They have an ability to see things from a point of view we may not see for many more years to come. May as well get what we can while we can.