Eight Years. |
Eight Years. |
Jan 3 2012, 09:14 PM
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#1
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Senior Member Group: Admin Posts: 4763 Joined: 15-March 05 From: Glendale, AZ Member No.: 197 |
Eight years. I mean seriously -- eight years!
-------------------- If Occam had heard my theory, things would be very different now.
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Jan 3 2012, 09:31 PM
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#2
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1089 Joined: 19-February 05 From: Close to Meudon Observatory in France Member No.: 172 |
Eight years. I mean seriously -- eight years! 8 years ?!?! As Mars veterans, we used to measure the life of a lander until its last transmission from Mars... Unfortunately, no more. So : Spirit lived until its mission Sol 2210 (March 22, 2010), and no communication has been received from Spirit since. Anyway, thanks a lot for your enthusiasm : it warms us a lot |
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Jan 3 2012, 09:42 PM
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#3
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Senior Member Group: Admin Posts: 3108 Joined: 21-December 05 From: Canberra, Australia Member No.: 615 |
While they are separate vehicles, I tend to think of Spirit and Opportunity as one mission.
We can honor Spirit's anniversary and journey while at the same time Opportunity continues the mission to explore Mars. |
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Jan 3 2012, 09:57 PM
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#4
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The Poet Dude Group: Moderator Posts: 5551 Joined: 15-March 04 From: Kendal, Cumbria, UK Member No.: 60 |
Eight years... unbelievable...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWk-umZm86U Never dared hope - not even in my most optimistic, most misty-eyed moods - that eight years after they landed, one of the rovers would still be roving. Make no mistake, downstream, in the deep future, the achievements of the rovers, and the men and women behind them, will be marvelled at. And historians will trawl the posts and threads of UMSF, and wish that they'd been here to live through these magical days with us. -------------------- |
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Jan 3 2012, 10:49 PM
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#5
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2922 Joined: 14-February 06 From: Very close to the Pyrénées Mountains (France) Member No.: 682 |
Still very emotional watching this video. This has been a Life changing day for quite some people including myself.
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Jan 3 2012, 11:49 PM
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#6
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Senior Member Group: Admin Posts: 3108 Joined: 21-December 05 From: Canberra, Australia Member No.: 615 |
As a tribute to Spirit and honoring Opportunity's continuing adventure, 'poet dude' extraordinaire Stuart Atkinson has written some beautiful words which I have incorporated into a new 'poemster' (poem-poster).
Full resolution and wallpaper versions are on my blog. NB: Before anybody goes the figure '8' of the rover tracks is not real, just added for effect Here's Stu poem: FIGURE EIGHT Hard to believe the Homeworld has circled Sol eight times Since the first MER bounced and boinged to a historic halt on Mars, Spirit followed faithfully soon after by her sister, Opportunity, Just as Clark had followed Lewis two centuries before. Babies born bloodied and bawling on that day chase girls In busy schoolyards now; wide-eyed, Star Trek t-shirt-wearing Interns who stumbled along the deer-stalked paths of JPL Now have interns of their own, and peer at screens painted Picasso-shades by real data beamed from the true Final Frontier... In a thousand years, when Mars has oceans of retina-burning blue, And honeymooning couples crump across the snow-capped summit of Olympus, the names 'Spirit' and "Opportunity' will still be Spoken wistfully; and tourists from Titan, explorers from Europa And Hyperion's most respected historians will stand before The rovers, displayed in all their restored glory in the Great Museum of Mars and envy us, this generation which saw Gusev's Rugged Rocks and Meridiani's misty mountains for the first time, In 2004, the year Earth finally conquered Mars. © Stuart Atkinson |
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Jan 4 2012, 12:04 AM
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#7
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1276 Joined: 25-November 04 Member No.: 114 |
Stu that link was great! Thanks.
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Jan 4 2012, 12:15 AM
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#8
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Senior Member Group: Admin Posts: 4763 Joined: 15-March 05 From: Glendale, AZ Member No.: 197 |
Brilliant image to go with it. You guys are a perfect team.
-------------------- If Occam had heard my theory, things would be very different now.
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Jan 4 2012, 12:27 AM
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#9
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Merciless Robot Group: Admin Posts: 8785 Joined: 8-December 05 From: Los Angeles Member No.: 602 |
Inspired...and brilliant as per your usual, gentlemen. Thank you!
Spirit & Oppy alone provide ample justification to establish a Nobel Prize in Space Systems Engineering. Stockholm, are you listening??? -------------------- A few will take this knowledge and use this power of a dream realized as a force for change, an impetus for further discovery to make less ancient dreams real.
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Jan 4 2012, 01:19 AM
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#10
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Member Group: Members Posts: 754 Joined: 9-February 07 Member No.: 1700 |
Great trip down memory lane! thanks
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Jan 4 2012, 05:12 AM
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#11
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Junior Member Group: Members Posts: 98 Joined: 17-July 11 From: Pasadena, CA Member No.: 6066 |
Indeed.
Today, I was on shift with Squyres as SOWG chair. At the end of the day, he pointed out that it's tonight that she landed, 8 years ago. As we did after the Columbia accident, we have named some targets on Cape York after some lost colleagues of ours... Watch out for the Greeley Pancam set and Morris Hill. Real beauts. -m |
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Jan 4 2012, 06:35 AM
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#12
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 3009 Joined: 30-October 04 Member No.: 105 |
I've enjoyed seeing where we've been but I'm looking forward to figuring out how it got there. And I'm really inspired to see where we are going.
--Bill -------------------- |
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Jan 4 2012, 07:35 AM
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#13
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Junior Member Group: Members Posts: 53 Joined: 1-March 11 From: Houston, USA Member No.: 5860 |
To put eight years in perspective, consider that it's the same amount of time that 2020 is ahead of us. In hardware terms, how many of us are using the same computer we had in 2004? The one I used back then no longer works. Early on I remember reading that rover lifespan would be limited to a year or so by loss of battery recharge capacity -- glad that didn't turn out to be true.
Many thanks to the rover designers and builders, without whose work we wouldn't be peering at a planetary surface as real as the one under our feet, and many thanks to this community -- fellow travelers on this exploration largely overlooked by the general public. |
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Jan 4 2012, 09:12 AM
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#14
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The Poet Dude Group: Moderator Posts: 5551 Joined: 15-March 04 From: Kendal, Cumbria, UK Member No.: 60 |
HUGE thanks to Astro0 for the beautiful picture, which is a very fitting tribute to the mission. He had to work very quickly there because I was late with my part of the project, and it looks **beautiful**!
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Jan 4 2012, 09:22 AM
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#15
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Rover Driver Group: Members Posts: 1015 Joined: 4-March 04 Member No.: 47 |
pfff crazy! It seems like yesterday. Amazing achievement.
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