The Spirit rover landed on January 4, 2004 and Opportunity landed on January 25, 2004. The baseline plan saw each rovers working for 90 days. However, Spirit remained operational until March 4, 2010 and Opportunity is still actively exploring Mars.
A reader points me to this successful crowd-funding campaign to back artist Ian Etters stay at the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) and his plan to create a
Manned Mock Mars Mission (M.M.M.M.) that incorporates performance, sculpture, painting, drawing, printmaking, photography and a simulation of living on Mars.
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity captured this 360-degree view using its
Navigation Camera (Navcam) after a 17-foot (5.3 meter) drive on
477th Martian day, or sol, of the rover’s work on Mars (Dec. 8, 2013).
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS. Full image and caption
I’ve mentioned previously that the Mars Curiosity rover LEGO model designed by Stephen Pakbaz , who had worked as an engineer on the real Curiosity rover at JPL, would become a commercial product from LEGO. The project was part of the LEGO® CUUSOO hobbyists program, which has seen some of their other models become production products for LEGO as well.
This past week LEGO announced that the model will hit the store shelves on January 1st:
The Mars One group so far has raised nearly $84,000 with its Indiegogo campaign and has 37 more days to reach their $400,000 goal. The funding will go towards the unmanned orbiter and lander projects they announced last week with Lockheed-Martin and Surrey Satelllite.
(Note that with Indiegogo, the fund-raising group can keep however much it raises as opposed to Kickstarter where the goal must be reached or exceeded to keep the pledged money.)
Last Tuesday the Mars One organization announced that they had contracted with Lockheed-Martin and Surrey Satellite (SSTL) for studies into development of an unmanned Mars orbiter and a lander spacecraft that would launch in the 2018 time frame. (See earlier post here.)
Mars One Press Conference: Lockheed Martin & SSTL selected for first Mission to Mars (10 Dec 2013, Washington DC) http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/mar…
00:00 – 02:52 Introduction by Dr. Linda Billings 02:53 – 09:18 Statement by Bas Lansdorp, CEO Mars One 09:18 – 12:43 Statement by Ed Sedivy, Chief Engineer Civil Space Lockheed Martin 09:18 – 15:31 Statement by Sir Martin Sweeting, Executive Chairman SSTL 15:31 – 17:19 Statement by Suzanne Flinkenflögel, Director of Communications Mars One 17:19 – 21:21 Indiegogo Crowdfunding Campaign Video 21:21 – 23:13 Closing Statement by Bas Lansdorp 23:13 – 56:35 Questions from the press (online & offline) answered by the panel
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity captured this 360-degree view using its