The Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has arrived at a piece of her heat shield debris. See a close-up here.
Spirit's surroundings on the other side of Mars aren't quite as interesting but they're pretty cool.
These amazing rovers are just that, amazing. Originally cheduled for less than 100 Martian days of work, Spirit is up to 352 Martian days and Opportunity is up to 332 Martian days. They've survived the worst the Martian winter had to throw at them and kept on drivin'. Let's hope the project teams don't run out of funding to keep these guys driving.
We're coming up on one year on Mars and there will no doubt be press conferences celebrating the milestone. I'll try to find that schedule and bring you all blog coverage of the activities.
update: The briefing (on NASA TV) is scheduled for January 3rd and looks like it's going to be a lot of fun.
Posted by asa at December 29, 2004 06:19 PMer..Mars has winters? I thought that a planet's rotation axis had to be tilted for it to have winters.
Posted by: Z on December 29, 2004 08:38 PMCheck out that large rock in the middle of the Spirit shot. It's much larger than the rest, and it's almost semi-spherical, while all the other rocks around it are jagged. Odd...
Z, yes, Mars has seasons and it's rotational axis is tilted (though that tilt has dramatically changed over the eons.)
Right now the Martian winter is still happening but the coldest days are behind us and the MERs have safely weathered the worst of it. More important than the temperature, though, is how low the sun has been in the Martian sky. The lower in the sky, the more oblique the angle to the solar panels on the MERs which charge their batteries and allow them to keep the heaters on their most critical components running.
--Asa
Posted by: Asa Dotzler on December 29, 2004 10:48 PMthis has easily made to top of best science stories of 2004 list.
http://www.sciencemag.org/sciext/btoy2004/
Thanks for keeping tabs on the rovers- without you I would have forgotten them already!
Posted by: Joey on December 30, 2004 07:35 AMAsa, thanks for keeping me apprised on local JPL events concerning our planetary neighbor! I've been doing other JPL related stuff (it concerns that big parade that happens in these parts new year's day). JPL's got a float. Saw Mark Adler there up on the scaffold level where I was, greeted him with a "hi!" (the friendly greeting of one who recognizes, that is, knows the other) then realized that he doesn't know me from Eve.
Anyway, take a look! Also, there'll be a webcam on JPL's float, too. Details at my site.
Posted by: Susan Kitchens on December 30, 2004 08:17 AMSusan, those are some great photos!! I really appreciate the time you put into blogging this great behind the scenes stuff.
--Asa
Posted by: Asa Dotzler on December 30, 2004 08:55 AMPBS documentry : "welcome to mars" on January 4th
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/mars/
Posted by: ohman on December 31, 2004 12:42 AMThe axis of Mars is tilted, but also its orbit around the sun is much more eccentric than Earth's, which has a significant effect on its seasons.
Here is a page about Martian seasons:
http://cmex-www.arc.nasa.gov/CMEX/data/MarsEssy/seasons/seasons.htm
The one-year Mars retrospectives are nice, but I want to hear more about what the Cassini science team thinks about the recent pictures of Iapetus. That giant ridge on the equator is pretty remarkable-- maybe it's too early to be entertaining any hypotheses about what it is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Iapetus_mosaic.jpg
