Remember how much I love Spirit and Opportunity? Well, NASA announced last week that Spirit's mission has officially come to an end; after more than a year of radio silence, scientists at NASA have ceased listening for further transmissions from Spirit. NPR did a nice reflection on the progress made by the rovers during their wildly successful Martian adventures.
But let's not get too discouraged. Opportunity is still up there chugging away, making tracks (albeit slowly) and sending back pictures.I just have to say this again, because I'm so totally enamored by these guys...er, this guy. (Oops.) Really though, how cool would it be if your job was to drive a robot around on Mars? Granted, it probably took a lot of work on significantly less fun projects for the scientists to get to this point in their careers, but still. "What did you do?" "I drove a rover on Mars." As the kid in The Incredibles says: "that was totally wicked!"
And on the subject of wicked but slow-moving jobs in the field of space exploration, NPR also did a story on the last shuttle mission, or more specifically on the guys who drive the truck that takes the shuttle from its hangar to the launch pad. They drive a truck called The Crawler, whose speedometer goes all the way up to a blistering two (two!) miles per hour! The truck (if you can call it that) is the world's largest self-powered land vehicle in the world, and weighs 18 million (million!) pounds, fully loaded. It gets a painful 32 feet (feet!) per gallon of fuel. The road to the launch pad, The Crawlerway, was specially built to hold all the weight, and is the width of a 4-land interstate highway (including the grass median). It's 3.5 miles long, it will take The Crawler all night to reach the pad. There are a team of drivers who take turns, so they can be well-rested when it's their turn at the wheel - wouldn't want to be the one responsible for falling asleep and crashing the shuttle!
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