Friday, January 03, 2014

Happy 10-Year Anniversary, Spirit (If You Were Still Alive)!

A mosaic taken with the Spirit rover's navigation cameras after landing on Mars on January 4, 2004.
NASA / JPL

Ten Years Ago, Spirit Rover Lands on Mars (Press Release)

This mosaic image taken on Jan. 4, 2004, by the navigation camera on the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit, shows a 360 degree panoramic view of the rover on the surface of Mars. Spirit operated for more than six years after landing in January 2004 for what was planned as a three-month mission.

Spirit drove 4.8 miles (7.73 kilometers), more than 12 times the goal set for the mission. The drives crossed a plain to reach a distant range of hills that appeared as mere bumps on the horizon from the landing site; climbed slopes up to 30 degrees as Spirit became the first robot to summit a hill on another planet; and covered more than half a mile (nearly a kilometer) after Spirit's right-front wheel became immobile in 2006. The rover returned more than 124,000 images. It ground the surfaces off 15 rock targets and scoured 92 targets with a brush to prepare the targets for inspection with spectrometers and a microscopic imager.

Source: NASA.Gov

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A self-portrait of the Spirit rover taken with her Panoramic Camera.
NASA / JPL

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