Spirit and Opportunity

Friday, June 16, 2006

Even the Energizer Bunny's jaw has dropped regarding how long these two rovers have continued to run around on Mars. Spirit, which landed first has recently been dragging one of its wheels. Mission planners have parked it for the duration of the Martian Winter which we're in right now. Otherwise though the instrumentation remains in good shape.

Opportunity is continuing to make its way south to the very large crater called Victoria. It's the largest crater in this image:

Traverse Map

To get a good idea of how large this crater is I zoomed up a Google Maps image of one of the major Cincinnati malls. This is Eastgate mall, and I think it's probably typical of malls across the country. The comparison is pretty useful IMO. To get an idea of the size of the crater look around yourself the next time you visit a mall. Take the mall and its parking lot, add probably (I'm guessing here) 20 stories of depth, and you're looking at Victoria. The interstate cloverleaf also gives a good clue.

Victoria crater vs. mall comparison

Just last week Opportunity got stuck in sand. This has happened once before and that time they spent about three weeks extracting the rover from the mini dune it was slipping in. This time it took about five days to get out. With fingers crossed, and no more dunes, I'm guessing that Opportunity can get to the crater edge in about two months. I can't wait.