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:bellows and a nozzle?

[compro01]

It would have to be quite powerful, as as far as I understand, that dust (or the rover, I forget which at the moment) has a fantastic static charge to it, so it requires a potent wind to remove it, which they've been getting on a fortunately regular basis for the past few years.

Re:NASA Automotives

[silarulz]

During the Lunokhod Programme in the late 60's and early 70's, the two rovers traveled a combined distance of 47kms on the moon! Actually I think one of the rovers still holds the record for the longest traveled distance on any extra-terrestrial planet. And that's in the 70s!