January 4: NASA’s Rover “Spirit” Landed on Mars, 2004

On January 4, 2004 — 14 years ago today — NASA’s robotic vehicle, the rover “Spirit,” landed safely on Mars. Spirit was the second robotic vehicle to land on Mars; the first was the Mars Pathfinder “Sojourner” in 1997. Spirit was joined by its twin rover, “Opportunity,” several weeks later. Both rovers were launched in July, 2003. The rovers were expected to operate for about 90 days. However, Spirit functioned for 5 years, over 20x the planned mission time. On May 1, 2009, Spirit got irretrievably stuck in Martian soft soil, but continued to send back data to Earth until it finally stopped communicating with Earth scientists on March 22, 2010.

Rover was assaulted by dust storms and cold winters, but came through these severe weather events largely unfazed. According to John Callas, Project Manager for the Spirit and Opportunity rover missions, “Rover turned lemons into lemonade a number of times.” For example, a couple of years into the mission, Spirit’s right front wheel broke, so NASA’s scientists and engineers learned how to drive Spirit backwards (dragging the damaged wheel behind). Out of this adversity, Spirit went on to make an amazing discovery: evidence of water, pH neutral (pure) water, and hot springs existing at a time in Mars’s past history. Spirit revealed strong indications that Mars was at one time like the Earth, most likely about 3.5 to 4 billion years ago — with liquid water on its surface, a thicker atmosphere, and warmer temperatures than what now exist. In other words, Mars was at one time a place that could have supported life.

With the help of exploratory rovers like Spirit, humans may one day travel to Mars and extend the human civilization to another planet.

YouTube videos:
•https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txLpd7tQwuY
•https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I94gybiKUKY

Sources:
•http://mars.nasa.gov/programmissions/missions/
•http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/home/
•http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_%28rover%29
•http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_missions_to_Mars

Image credit:
•An artist's concept portrays a NASA Mars Exploration Rover on the surface of Mars. By NASA/JPL/Cornell University, Maas Digital LLC [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ANASA_Mars_Rover.jpg