Monday, January 21, 2013

How Quickly We Forget...

It's been nine years ago this week:
Opportunity, NASA's other Mars rover, has tooled around the red planet for so long it's easy to forget it's still alive.

Some 5,000 miles (8,000 kilometers) away from the limelight surrounding Curiosity's every move, Opportunity this week quietly embarks on its tenth year of exploration—a sweet milestone since it was only tasked to work for three months.

"Opportunity is still going. Go figure," said mission deputy principal investigator Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis.
Designed for three months of operation, but here we are 108 months later and Opportunity is still going strong, and still returning good science.  An astronaut wouldn't have lasted quite so long :)

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