MER@5 Years, Your thoughts and congratulations to the MER teams Options

[ElkGroveDan]

Five Years of Spirit on Mars

I normally don't go re-posting the blogs that I know most of us here read regularly, but I have to point out what a wonderful job Emily did in digesting five years of Spirit's exploration into one commentary/column of under 1800 words.

I can't wait to read Opportunity's story later this month.

http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001796/

[Astro0]

From Scott's Blog: As I'm coming in, Jeng Yen tells me it's going to be a slow day. Bad weather over Australia interfered with our comm link, so the day's sequences didn't get uplinked.

I remember this day really well.

As it was realised that there was a loss of normal comms with Spirit, the media started looking for answers and who or what was to blame (they're always on the lookout for a 'bad news' angle).

I think it was Jessica Collison who mentioned that the bad weather at Tidbinbilla (the Canberra DSN) was one of the possible problems. We were tracking Spirit at the time when things started to go haywire.

Well, didn't the media latch on to that. The early calls (the first at 3am from the BBC), told me that a rover manager said that we were the cause of the rover's problems. I spent the next 24 hours fielding reporters and phone calls from just about every news agency in the world saying that JPL/NASA had blamed us for the loss of Spirit - which of course they hand't.

It wasn't until the press conference and Pete Theisinger saying that the anomoly was on the vehicle that the media let us off the hook.

Ah, the joys of those heady days!

Astro0

[Stu]

Well, didn't the media latch on to that.

Nooooooooooooooooooooo!?!?!?! And they're usually so diligent when it comes to checking the facts of stories involving science and technology!

Bet you found out adrenalin really is brown that day, eh, Astro0?