3-month Mars Rover Missions Still Going After 5 Years

Off-Earth Advances :: Comments (0)

4 January 2009 :: by J.E. Robertson

The twin Mars rover projects NASA launched over 5 years ago, which landed the Spirit rover on 3 January 2004 and the Opportunity rover on 24 January 2004, which planned only 3 months of research, are still roving, gathering data and transmitting new discoveries back to Earth, after 5 years at work on the desolate red planet. Specifically, the rovers have revealed a great deal of information about water around the Martian equator billions of years in the past.

The rovers are exposed to extreme conditions at all times, and program directors are enthusiastic about the resilience shown by the rovers. Some wear is evident, and failing parts that can’t be repaired have limited the rovers’ operative functionality: Spirit must move in reverse at all times, due to a “jammed wheel” and Opportunity’s robotic arm is limited by a failed electrical wire.

Spirit set up for the Martian winter at its “winter haven” (image below), perched atop a hill to keep from getting buffeted by debris rolling into the crater below.

The rovers alternate between periods of rest, to protect against unnecessary environmental perils, and roving, from one site to another, and across wide ranges, like the craters and plateaus they have explored for signs of mineral evidence of water.

According to the BBC:

Spirit is exploring a 150km-wide bowl-shaped depression known as Gusev Crater. It has found an abundance of rocks and soils bearing evidence of extensive exposure to water.

Opportunity is on the other side of the planet, in a flat region known as Meridiani Planum.

Opportunity has demonstrated that there was water present, which flowed over the Martian surface, depositing sedimentary rock that can now be studied by the rover. If the rovers continue to operate for one full additional year, they could potentially produce another four times as much data as they were initially expected to produce for their planned 3-month mission.

Below is a view of the Victoria Crater, shot in panoramic view by a camera attached to one of the rovers. High resolution panoramic images were one of the popular early products of the twin rover missions, and have continued to provide valuable information about the Martian environment and history.

In December, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) discovered evidence of carbonate minerals, necessary for making some of the rocks already known to exist, and indicative of a less acidic water environment at some point in the Martian past, evidence that could indicate there was microbial life or that it could still be hidden somewhere in the Martian environment.

The MRO has also been providing high-resolution images and chemical-spectral scans that help describe the composition of the Martian soil and indicate what sort of physical interactions may have taken place between rock formations and liquids or gases running over the Martian surface, which is helpful to reconstructing the now absent atmosphere that would have permitted a warmer and more life-sustaining climate.