NASA Mars Rovers Hit 5-Year Anniversary

An anonymous reader writes "NASA's Mars rovers have been on the red planet for five years now. The rovers were originally planned to stay operational on the planet for only 90 days, but it has turned into a much longer mission than anticipated. NASA has put together a video to celebrate the anniversary. The rovers have made important discoveries about wet and violent environments on ancient Mars. They also have returned a quarter-million images, driven more than 21 kilometers (13 miles), climbed a mountain, descended into craters, struggled with sand traps and aging hardware, survived dust storms, and relayed more than 36 gigabytes of data via NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter. To date, the rovers remain operational for new campaigns the team has planned for them."

Comments

Re:typical government project

[zappepcs]

Actually, they did complete in 90 days, but since the hardware didn't die, they kept going with the project. Today is a day that the design team can sit back, kick their feet up and know they did a damned good job. This is an awesome achievement. Anyone who has built a robot will tell you that keeping those rovers alive for such a long time in a harsh environment is a huge achievement. The team that worked this project, dealing with the rovers 24/7 should be proud. Imagine, 5 years of knowing that if you make a mistake the entire world will know. For 5 years, in the face of all adversity, they did not fail. That's awesome.