Word: spiritism
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...dune buggy-size Spirit and Opportunity are the third in NASA's family of Mars rovers, descendants of the 2-ft.-long Sojourner craft, which arrived on Mars in the summer of 1997. Like its bigger siblings, Sojourner came with only a very brief factory warranty - just 30 days in its case - and like its bigger siblings, easily exceeded it, operating for five months before finally surrendering to the Martian elements. It's rarely a good idea to take NASA's estimates of the lifespan of its ships too literally. The agency tends to lowball these calls, making it more...
...rovers were launched atop separate boosters. Spirit left Earth on June 10, 2003, and Opportunity followed on July 7, taking advantage of the biannual close approach Mars and Earth make as they orbit the sun. On solar system scales, a close approach is still a goodly distance - 35 million miles in 2003 - which means that the rovers needed seven months to get where they were going. Spirit landed first, bouncing down in a swaddle of air bags in Mars' Gusev Crater. Opportunity followed three weeks later, landing on the other side of the planet in what is now known...
...Spirit and Opportunity did just that, aiming for vast basins that have the look of land that was once submerged. Spirit soon uncovered evidence of salts in the soil, a substance that would have been abundant in Martian seas, just as it is in Earth's. Opportunity discovered deposits of BB-sized pellets - which NASA nicknamed blueberries - that are rich in hematite, a mineral that forms only in watery environments. And by pure serendipity, in 2007 a balky wheel on Spirit dug a shallow trench in the ground, revealing the presence of white silica, another indicator of water...
...Spirit's busted wheel is not the 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...