It has been five (5) years since the first of a pair of Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) landed on the Red Planet. Followed three (3) weeks later. The planned mission life was three (3) months (90 Mars Days, sols) apiece. A Mars Day is about 39.5 minutes, or 2.7% longer than an Earth day. Five(5)years later they are both still chugging along.
No doubt, you will know MER-A and MER-B by the names Spirit and Opportunity. The previous links are the Wiki pages for the Lewis and Clark of Mars exploration.
CNN and most other news sources are running storieson the still running rovers. I want to take some time to point out some of the highlights of their incredible trek.
Rover | Launch | Land |
---|
Spirit | June 10, 2003 | Jan. 3, 2004 |
Opportunity | July 7, 2003 | Jan. 25, 2004 |
The timing for these launches was chosen to take advantage of the fact that during 2003 Mars was closer to Earth than it had been for 1000's of years. Both rovers were launched from Cape Canaveral
Air Force Station on central Florida’s Space Coast. (Military payloads tend to launch from Vandenburg AF base in CA.)
Much more information, including cool pics can be found from this NASA Press Kit.
Let your fingers do some browsing while your mind dreams of the future of our species.