Is Opportunity a Relative of WALL-E?

[mishalak]

Opportunity, one of the two Mars rovers, is still going strong. They're both still going but Spirit is colder and still has to cope with a jammed wheel that only lets it go backwards, despite this it has rolled over 500 meters since then (7.5km in total). The luckier Opportunity has gone a huge distance in the nearly five years since it landed on Mars January 25, 2004. As of September 2nd it had gone 11.79 kilometers (7.33 miles). Very impressive for an inexpensive little project (at $800 million the two rovers together cost about 65% of the average cost of a Space Shuttle Launch) that was planned to last 90 days if things didn't go well.

Now NASA plans to head to Endeavor Crater (not to be confused with the already visited Endurance Crater) about 12 km from Victoria Crater, the place Opportunity left at the start of this month. Will it make it? Hard to say. But given the results so far I would not bet against the craft at this point. And if it does not... the statistics so far are pretty impressive. This is good value for money.

Comments

[gomeza.livejournal.com]

Word. We haven't seen success like this (in a planetary exploration program) since Magellan.