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NASA to Abandon Mars Spirit Rover

H

HAL.9000

Lieutenant Commander
The Spirit is dead.
NASA said on Tuesday that it was abandoning efforts to get back in touch with Spirit, one of the two rovers on Mars. Spirit, which has been stuck in a sand trap for two years, fell silent last year as winter arrived and its solar panels could no longer generate enough electricity. Engineers had hoped that the rover would revive when spring returned, but they never heard from it again.
Now, as the Martian days grow shorter, Spirit’s managers decided that it was not worth the time and money to continue.

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The Spirit is dead?
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!:wah:

I followed their adventures. On clear nights when Mars is visible I would look up and say -those two guys are up there right now on that orange dot in the sky just rolling away. It was exciting science.

Sad.
 
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It's too bad, but both platforms lasted way longer than was expected. At least Opportunity still seems to be going strong.
 
Yeah, I'm surprised this hasn't happened yet. Like Skywalker says, they've far outlasted what they've expected out of them. I believe they only were originally expected to only last 60 days, so the fact that it's lasted this long is phenomenal. It's one of the major victories NASA has had with the Mars program since the string of bad luck they had before then. We've learned quite a deal from these two rovers. The fact that Spirit was damaged and kept on going says a lot. If you think about it, if Opportunity lasts until 2014, which is just a few years from now, it will have been 10 years since they landed. Quite mindboggling really. I remember when they landed like it was yesterday.
 
spirit.png
 
Thanks, Gep, for making us even more depressed. :rommie:

Spirit was a wonderful little robot who functioned far beyond his expected parameters, like the Voyager probes did. Definitely an example of NASA at its best (and the way it should always be).

RIP, Spirit. :(
 
Cartoon could have been worse. Ben Linus could have convinced the rover to keep trying right before he murders it.
 
Boo Hoo, sniff, sniff from the cartoon BUT Spirit did so very well. We learned a lot and the next one is better for it.

Someone had better check the voice mail closely for a couple of years.

Go Opportunity!!!
 
We should all be so lucky to last 20 times beyond our design lifetime. We might actually get to see Warp drive invented!
 
It reminds me of that commercial with the lamp that gets thrown out to the curb. So depressing!
 
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