Spirit: End of Mission Options

[briv1016]

New Update:

http://www.planetary.org/news/2011/0430_Ma...ate_Spirit.html

There is only so much that can be done from down here, and the countdown to the end of mission for Spirit has quietly, unofficially begun behind the scenes. Word is that NASA headquarters is preparing to announce that MER will continue as a one-rover mission around the first of June.

Later:

JPL's crew will continue the current recovery operations, which take place several times a day, through May 25th, informed Nelson. Following that, "greatly reduced recovery operations" -- averaging one effort each week -- will continue through the end of the year.

[Nix]

There was a time when I used to sit down at the computer every single day,
waiting for new images to come down from Spirit and Opportunity.
Like so many others here I stood amazed..
It touched my heart to see the scientists behind the mission fall into tears,
when those first images came down onto that big screen at JPL..
I enjoyed playing around with those images, sharing that joy with a bunch
of people here doing exactly the same.
I enjoyed learning from the mission, learning about cameras, geology,
image processing techniques and so forth...
I enjoyed sharing my enthusiasm with my wife, as she sat in the couch
watching tv on her own.. as I was way to hung up looking at alien desert rocks.

There was a time when I would have said that Spirit is dead.
But Spirit is still there -it's a robot after all.. it's parts will deteriorate in
the Martian winds but it could be preserved as we all know.
We all know to well that what really makes us living organisms; our personality,
and everything what makes us who we are, cannot be preserved. We die.
We leave a lifetime of memories, depending on the duration of our staying
here on Earth...

There was a time when I would have been sad for the so-called death of Spirit,
but I'm more than satisfied. I'm more than gratefull for what really made Spirit
something more than just a robot; the real people behind the commands that she
was given in order to function.. the people who sacrificed a lot of time of their lives
to make Spirit do what she did. The people who decided that this wealth of imagery
and other data should be shared with the average man, the amateur astronomer
and others that gather in places like UMSF founded by Doug.

There was a time that all of the people who's names are on the dvd's carried by
Spirit and Opportunity were alive. Undoubtebly a number of those people have died
since the Mars Exploration Mission carried on their names to Mars.
My wife was one of them.
She left on sol 2269 for Spirit, the same number in days from
Spirit's landing to the last Pancam images, or 2208 sols.
I remember thinking 'you are both dying now...'
In memory I like to think of her now as the ancient Greek did,
wandering the plains of Elysium, a province on Mars and the imaginary place in Greek
mythology where the entrance was gained by a righteous life, the island of the blessed,
those who received immortality.

Spirit is what we call dead, but she is still there, just as anything and everyone that
ever left a memory once upon a time. And to quote Einstein; time is an illusion...

So, thank you Spirit, a big thank you to every soul involved in the mission, and another
big thank you for the dvd on board, for taking us to Mars, for eternity !