• more about #spirit
    Pessimippöpötåmus: Spirit's a girl? I always she was a man bot. And cosmic rays eh? Are Decepticons around Mars these days? Or is it Michael Bay's elaborate movie campaign? more »
    twophrasebark: I'm just a mean green mother from outer space and I'm bad I'm just a mean green mother from outer space And it looks like you been had I'm just a me... more »
    silver-bolt: The robotic equivalent of blanking your mind when you see an eldritch horror. Maybe the Rover stumbled onto Cthulhu's Summer Home. more »
    twophrasebark: I was able to recover the erased code: //selecting 8 nos (1-100)without repeating randomize(); a[0]=random(100); while(i!=8) { I AM BEBO. FROM MARS. ... more »
    Pope John Peeps II: Really NASA, a "cosmic ray"? That's the best you can give us? That's the explanation that the community college sci fi writing night course class woul... more »
    strider_mt2k: That thing is SO over it's rated mission time that all bets are off at this point. The rovers have done incredibly well in this respect. Here's hoping... more »
    corpore-metal: And on a lighter note. I love our plucky Martian robot rovers but don't the names Spirit and Opportunity sound incredibly lame? They sound like school... more »
    corpore-metal: Well, I suppose it would be pretty cool if it was a prelude to alien invasion (Or just simple alien sneaking around and hiding their tracks.) at least... more »
    Andrew Liptak: No disassemble! No disassemble! more »
    Belabras: Classic symptom of Old One exposure. It saw that which was not meant to be seen. more »
    Anekanta - Go Play!: Sounds like old Spirit saw something it shouldn't have seen, and its memory conveniently "malfunctioned." The Martians only want us to learn about th... more »
    Andrew Liptak: Maybe they should defragment its harddrives. Yeah, I got nothin'. more »
    crashedpc - Haifisch: I'm assuming that right now Spirit is setting up the foundations for the first Mars colony? Like, literally paving the ground and raising up barns, Am... more »
  • #marsrover

    Mars Rover Hit By Cosmic Ray, Gains Amnesia

    It's not exactly the secret origin that Marvel Comics promised us, but a cosmic ray may have given NASA's Mars rover Spirit the superpower of... forgetfulness. Are strange things afoot on the red planet? More »
  • #thespirit

    Six Spirit Clips To Test Your Frank Miller Tolerance

    Is The Spirit just like Sin City — actually a playfully dark thriller, and we've all just missed the good jokes? See for yourself in these six Spirit clips.
  • #space

    Mars Science Lab Rover Mission Delayed Two Years

  • #triviagasm

    The Triumphant Journeys of Martian Robots

  • #marsrover

    Spirit, the Mars Rover, Left to Die Before Its Time

    The brave, unflagging Mars rover Spirit, who has lived on the Red Planet for almost four years, has been given a death sentence by the U.S. government. Right now, the little robot is resting on a sunny slope, waiting out the winter and preparing to do more tests on the Martian atmosphere. But now it looks like Spirit has rolled on its six wheels and done science experiments for the very last time. The U.S. government has forced NASA, this country's national space agency, to cut its budget by 4 million dollars. And that means only one rover, Opportunity, will survive. To say that this is a tragedy is an understatement. More »
  • #missiontomars

    Looking for Life on Mars with the Next Generation Rover

    Definitely one of the coolest symposia at AAAS was the one this afternoon devoted to the Martian rovers — past, present, and future. On the panel were NASA's Richard Cook, who helped design Spirit and Opportunity as well as the next Martian rover; Steven Squyres, a Cornell geologist who has been working with Spirit and Opportunity to get as many geological samples as he can while the rovers survive; and Andrew Knoll, a Harvard planetologist who has studied the evidence for Martian water extensively (including whether it could support life as we know it). I've got highlights from the panel below, plus a giant gallery of pictures of a life-sized model of the new rover, the Mars Science Lab Rover (MSL), which will be blasting off late next year and landing on the red planet in 2010.
  • #mars

    Meet The Man From Mars