Mars Rover Anniversary Program, JPL (Special Program) Options

[dot.dk]

Just a reminder to tell people that NASA TV (finally) shows something to celebrate 2 years on Mars

Eastern U.S. time.
January 24, Tuesday
2:45 p.m. - 3:30 p.m. - Mars Rover Anniversary Program - JPL (Special Program)

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html

[MarsEngineer]

I posted this on Mars Rover Blog. I thought you also might be interested. (I do not post often)....

What a difference two years makes!
Two years ago last night I was at the edge of my seat and nearly bouncing off the walls. I had woken up at 6 am to join the EDL gang for breakfast at Burger Continental. We tried to be relaxed but Spirit's Sol 18 anomaly had really thrown us for a loop. We were beginning to think that we may have a dead rover on Mars and with Opportunity headed into the remains of a dust storm (one that elevated the atmosphere pressure and hence lowered the air density where it is needed most during entry) and knowing full well that Meridiani was at the upper edge of the elevation we could get to, our confidence was ebbing fast. Our only consolation was that Meridiani was believed to be pretty safe from a rock and slope perspective (we did not know for sure). Regardless we started that day with a lot of trepidation and knots in our guts. I could not finish my breakfast so instead I raced to the lab to hear news of the late night commanding to try to get Spirit out of her endless reset loop. When I got to the 8th floor the first people I saw were Richard and Jennifer. They looked tired but the beaming grins from their faces told me all I needed to know, Spirit was not dead and in fact was very likely to live.

I was still unsettled that day, but we did not have the near panicked debates on what to do about pyro electronics or parachutes as we had 3 weeks earlier. We even got a signal during the airbag bouncing at landing on the LCP or left circularly polarized channel. (We lost the signal near the first bounce on Spirit and had to wait an interminable 15 minutes or so for the rover to squirt a signal out on its lander base petal patch antenna that was pointed to Earth.)

It was so much easier, but for some reason I was far more nervous and far more relieved when it landed safely. After talking to politicians and cheering in the press conference, I was so tired I did not wait for those great first images to come down a few hours later. Instead I went home to my family and cheered with them over a glass of wine and watched the images come down on TV with the rest of the world. It was a great glass.

Today my blood pressure is much lower.

Cheers,
Rob Manning
Former MER Engineer

PS we are all still shocked at how long these beasties have lasted. I joked with Mark Adler yesterday that being off by a factor of 8 in lifetime and a factor of 10 in distance that maybe we had made some sort of systematic error somewhere during the design.

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Comments made here are the express opinion of the author and do not represent the views of JPL, Caltech nor NASA.

[mars loon]

What a difference two years makes!

PS we are all still shocked at how long these beasties have lasted.  I joked  ....  that maybe we had made some sort of systematic error somewhere during the design.

Hi Rob,

great to hear from you and congratulations to all of you. and please keep those systemic errors coming !! thanks for those interesting tidbits. I am amazed that you watched those first pictures from home.

ken