Word: alongism
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...then again, there aren't a lot of things like NASA's Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers, the robotic ships that landed on the Red Planet five years ago this month with an expected lifespan of 90 days and yet have chugged along ever since - surviving paralyzing cold, blinding dust and long periods without sun, all of which occasionally left them silent and still, but only until conditions improved and they shook off the dust, stirred to life and puttered off to do more work. So far, Spirit and Opportunity have beamed home a quarter of a million images...
...only lame limb on the now aging rovers. Opportunity's robotic arm - which carries many of its exploration tools, including its rock drill - has what amounts to an arthritic elbow. This makes it impossible for the arm to retract fully and requires the rover to toddle along with a sort of perpetual salute. Spirit itself has been reduced to driving backwards, dragging its broken wheel in the soil as it moves along...
Still, move along both rovers do. Spirit's next destinations are the comparatively nearby Goddard Crater and an outcropping of what might be volcanic material. Opportunity has just embarked on a long march toward Endeavour Crater, a seven-mile journey that - with the rover's slow speed and frequent stops and starts - will take two years to complete...
...ground operation began late Saturday with a massive artillery barrage all along the Gaza boundary, designed not only to destroy whatever fortifications Hamas fighters have built but also to signal that Israel has once again broken its own restraints on military action in Gaza, willing to go hard against the Hamas leadership no matter where they are and no matter the consequences to security along Israel's own southwestern frontier. Already in recent days, Israeli forces struck a house of a Hamas leader while civilians were inside and bombed a mosque at Beit Lahiya believed by Israel to have been...
...Kilinochchi's importance is only partly strategic. It is one of several key areas of territory along the A9 highway, a road toward the northern tip of the teardrop-shaped island and one of the main supply routes into Mullaitivu, the thick jungle areas where the LTTE is believed to base its operations. Symbolically, Kilinochchi is more important. The 463 square mile (1,200 sq. km.) district it governs has been under LTTE control for more than 10 years, ever since the Sri Lankan Army lost a battle known as Operation Unceasing Waves in September...