Mars and Africa

Jim Kingdon wrote:

Up on Mars, The amazing immortal Opportunity Rover is closing in on
the half-mile-wide Victoria Crater:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12875359/



Ah, I didn't realize it was still driving during the winter (I knew it
didn't need to worry as much as Spirit, being in a more equatorial
location, but I didn't know that it would still be able to move).


They really lucked out with those dust devils cleaning off the solar
array periodically for them.
In fact, other than that software glitch at the beginning, both these
missions have been the antitheses of the "Great Martian Ghoul" effect
and have been very lucky all along, right from the start in the case of
Opportunity rolling into the geologically interesting crater on landing.

That's a nice summary of where things are now; another source is
http://www.marstoday.com/news/news.html?mid=58

There's a picture from Opportunity which shows that Victoria Crater is
now within view:
http://www.marstoday.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=20635


Rover headquarters is he http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html
And all the raw images from the rover cameras are posted he
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/
I hope at some point they stick all the images from the navigation
cameras together into a movie so that you can see the view out of the
front of the rovers as they traverse the Martian surface from landing
until now.
I wouldn't be surprised if they do that at the end of each rover's
lifetime.
At the moment we've received a total of 82,912 images from Spirit, and
71,842 images from Opportunity.

Pat