Planetary rovers: Spirit rover, Opportunity rover, Mars Exploration Rover, Mars Science Laboratory, Mars Pathfinder

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Pages: 48. Chapters: Spirit rover, Opportunity rover, Mars Exploration Rover, Mars Science Laboratory, Mars Pathfinder, Astrobiology Field Laboratory, University Rover Challenge, BYU Mars Rover, Lunar rover, Nomad rover, Michigan Mars Rover Team, LORAX, Zoë. Excerpt: Spirit, MER-A (Mars Exploration Rover - A), is a robotic rover on Mars, active from 2004 to 2010. It was one of two rovers of NASA's ongoing Mars Exploration Rover Mission. It landed successfully on Mars at 04:35 Ground UTC on January 4, 2004, three weeks before its twin, Opportunity (MER-B), landed on the other side of the planet. Its name was chosen through a NASA-sponsored student essay competition. The rover became stuck in late 2009, and its last communication with Earth was sent on March 22, 2010. The rover completed its planned 90-sol mission. Aided by cleaning events that resulted in higher power from its solar panels, Spirit went on to function effectively over twenty times longer than NASA planners expected following mission completion. Spirit also logged 7.73 km (4.8 mi) of driving instead of the planned 1 km (0.6 mi), allowing more extensive geological analysis of Martian rocks and planetary surface features. Initial scientific results from the first phase of the mission (the 90-sol prime mission) were published in a special issue of the journal Science. On May 1, 2009 (5 years, 3 months, 27 Earth days after landing; 21.6 times the planned mission duration), Spirit became stuck in soft soil. This was not the first of the mission's "embedding events" and for the following eight months NASA carefully analyzed the situation, running Earth-based theoretical and practical simulations, and finally programming the rover to make extrication drives in an attempt to free itself. These efforts continued until January 26, 2010 when NASA officials announced that the rover wa...

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