16.11.07

Peering at Rocks

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Image source with more information


As it finished its second Martian year on Mars, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit was beginning to examine a group of angular rocks given informal names corresponding to peaks in the Colorado Rockies. A Martian year -- the amount of time it takes Mars to complete one orbit around the sun -- lasts for 687 Earth days. Spirit completed its second Martian year on the rover's 1,338th Martian day, or sol, corresponding to Oct. 8, 2007.

Exploring Mars on the most human scales yet: the Mars rovers are still going strong. NASA recently (hopefully not too optimistically) extended their mission into 2009.

You can read the Planetary Society's latest update on the rovers here.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh, to have 687 days in a year! Then I'd only be - hmm, how many years old?

I'll have to go do some math - this could take awhile...

;-)

Anonymous said...

"A rover who stares at rocks must have a lot on his mind."

[Dante's Peak]

Geosomin said...

One of the rovers trundled by the Mars picket post the other day. I gave it's dodgy wheel a bit of tinkering, but I'm not very good at fixing things like that. I think they're glad for the company for a while...