Alien Anomalies

Mars Exploration Rovers Update: Opportunity Works on a Whim, Team to Stand Down for Curiosity For eight and a half Earth years and counting, Opportunity has demonstrated the now legendary MER mettle, roving across the Meridiani plains, setting and then breaking drive records, surviving dangerous sand dunes, driving into a crater and back out, and finding evidence that, yes, water did once flow on Mars. Through it all, this rover that likes to rove evolved a persona as her human colleagues saw it. This rover was "The Glamour Girl," a "Little Miss Perfect" who loves attention and reveling in the spotlight, compared with her more cantankerous twin Spirit. Opportunity took the images that went into making this stunning view with her panoramic camera this month, while she was on approach to Whim Creek, which is visible in the center of the image. Stuart Atkinson processed it here in black and white. For more of Atkinson's imagery and words, go to his Road to Endeavour blog. Now Spirit is silent, and Opportunity is a veteran robot field geologist – downright ancient in Mars robot years – and "an emotionally mature rover," Callas added, "that understands these things happen and that attention will be focused on MSL." I cannot see why they have to stop one rover just because another has landed. Maybe Oppo will get 'stuck' too or else she will be dismantled by the Martians like Phoenix and Spirit have.

Speculation, of course, but we have yet to have a decent image of Spirit and the one we do have of Phoenix is inconclusive...

I wonder if we will get a last image of Oppo before she is left like an old car in a scrap yard to rust and be dismantled.