mars rovers spirit and opportunity

While much of the scientific community ponders the possibility of life on Mars, Atmospheric Sciences Professor Istvan Szunyogh of Texas A&M University is more concerned with finding out if there is "weather." While the Red Planet's thin atmosphere (only 1 percent the density or ours) means there isn't weather as we experience it here, we do know that there are clouds, extreme temperatures, strong winds and dust storms that make the worst on Earth look tame by comparison. As such, NASA has awarded a grant to Szunyogh and a team of other researchers to analyze and forecast those conditions.

Spirit Mars rover, Courtesy NASA

The Mars rover Spirit landed on the Red Planet on January 3, 2004, for a mission that was scheduled to last 90 Martian days, or sols (one sol is about 1.03 Earth days). More than two years later, it looks like the hugely successful mission might finally be coming to an end. The motor that drives Spirits right-front wheel has stopped working, limiting the rovers mobility. And if Spirit cant reach the other side of a nearby hill soon, it wont be able to correctly orient its solar panels for the coming Martian winter. If it doesnt get enough power over the winter, it wont be able to run the heaters that keep its electronics from freezing. But even if it fails, its twin rover Opportunity is still rolling on all six wheels. —Michael Moyer

The Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity won a Best of Whats New Grand Award in 2004.

The twin Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, have observed more than 4,000 geographical features on the planet since they landed in January 2004. Expected to run for only three months, the rovers are still going strong, and their mission has now been extended to at least September of next year. They've been ranging for so long, in fact, that they're causing a problem for their handlers. In order to document the terrain efficiently, scientists have had to come up with unique names for all the features the rovers discover, a task that gets tougher with each passing day.

Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone here. Bill Gates studied here (before dropping out). The sewing machine, vulcanized rubber, the Polaroid camera, the microwave oven, artificial limbs, synthetic penicillin, the first computers, Arpanet, e-mail, inertial guidance systems—all are products of Boston ingenuity. Not so surprising when you consider that the city boasts more than 60 colleges and universities.

Seven years ago, the largest and most expensive interplanetary probe ever built blasted off from Cape Canaveral. It was loaded with 12 advanced scientific instruments, 72 pounds of plutonium to power them, and a capsule destined to be jettisoned toward the only other object in our solar system protected by a nitrogen-based atmosphere. After launch, the spacecraft began its voyage through the void of space and was promptly forgotten by all but a few scientists and space enthusiasts.