Asa Dotzler: Firefox and more

Can there be any doubt that Mars was once a very wet place? And has there ever been a more successful planetary exploration mission than the Spirit and Opportunity MER program?

After nearly 1,200 Martian days, the Mars Exploration Rover, Spirit, is still making amazing discoveries. Not even a busted wheel can stop Spirt -- just the opposite, actually. It's the rover's broken wheel that's scraping up this new evidence of the past presence of water.

And on the other side of Mars, the rover Opportunity has just gotten another energy boost coming in the form of a "dust cleaning event". This is the the second one this month allowing Opportunity to collect nearly as many watt-hours of juice as it could the day it landed! The solar panels on the rovers were designed to collect about 900 watt-hours each sol (Martian day). Because of the accumulation of dust and dirt on the solar panels, power collection had, at its lowest, fallen to about half that level. Opportunity is now collecting about 800 watt-hours per sol!! These cleaning events come in the form of a stiff breeze or a small dustdevil that clears dirt and dust from the rover's solar panels. They have helped to extend the lives of the two rovers nearly three years and a combined 11 miles of travel after the conclusion of the original mission.