One Year Later, Mars Rovers Continuing To Deliver

摘要

A year after landing on Mars — and months beyond its expected mission life — the six-wheeled robotic rover Spirit continues to probe the red planet's secrets as it moves into new territory. The first of NASA's two Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) to reach the red planet — the second, Opportunity, landed three weeks later — Spirit has overcome early hurdles in a somewhat run-of-the-mill landing zone to find utterly new terrain. "The remarkable story of the day is that these rovers are still making scientific discoveries," Steve Squyres, the mission's principal investigator from Cornell University, said during a Jan. 3 press briefing marking the anniversary. "Spirit has moved into something totally different... a completely different geological territory."