Spirit and Opportunity Mars Rovers
By Logan Ward
Originally designed for a 90-day mission, Spirit and Opportunity persevered through the Red Planet’s freezing cold conditions, sand traps and dust storms for years. (Opportunity is still going 2734 Martian days later.) Their spectacular discoveries and rugged engineering earned the plucky rovers PM's Mechanical Lifetime Achievement Award.
For six-wheeled, 400-pound mechanical geologists, Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity have really turned on the charm, working their way into the hearts of an admiring public—and, most powerfully, those of their engineers. "We just couldn't be prouder of those little rovers," says NASA's deputy administrator, Lori Garver. After landing on Mars in 2004, each rover was meant to operate for 92 days and travel about three-quarters of a mile. Nearly seven years and 20 miles later, Opportunity still motors on. Spirit performed a feat of Martian mountaineering before finally running out of power on the darker, harsher side of the planet last year. To observers such as Daniel Wilson, author of Robopocalypse and a PM adviser, "they're a great example of the resiliency of robots and the ingenuity of humankind."
If the rovers' stamina wildly exceeded expectations, so have their discoveries: picture-postcard images from the surface of Mars, evidence that the planet once held water, footage of dust devils that offers insights into Martian wind. They also inspired the next generation of space explorers. This November, a new vehicle named Curiosity will be sent to the Red Planet to continue NASA's Mars Exploration Program, which began in 1976 with the two Viking landers. It will drill into soil and fire lasers at rocks, analyze mineral samples and search for life's carbon-based building blocks—work made possible by its intrepid twin predecessors. As John Callas wrote in a heartfelt goodbye to Spirit: "She has also given us a great intangible. Mars is no longer a strange, distant and unknown place. Mars is now our neighborhood." For all that, brave rovers, we salute you.
SPEED WHEN ENTERING MARS ATMOSPHERE:
12,000 MPH
LENGTH: 5.2 FEET
WIDTH: 7.5 FEET
HEIGHT: 4.9 FEET
WEIGHT: 384 POUNDS
17 times heavier than Pathfinder
TOP LAND SPEED: AVERAGE LAND SPEED:
2 INCHES/SEC 0.4 INCHES/SEC
OPERATING TEMPERATURE (F):
-40° TO 104°
AVERAGE LIFETIME OF ROVER TRACKS:
I'm standing on the edge of me.