NASA Mars Rovers Win Popular Mechanics "Breakthrough" Award
NASA Mars Rovers Win Popular Mechanics 'Breakthrough' Award
More than seven years after completing their three-month prime missions
on opposite sides of Mars, NASA rovers Spirit and Opportunity have been
selected for lifetime achievement award honors as part of the
Breakthrough Awards presented by Popular Mechanics magazine.
The magazine today announced recipients of awards to be presented Oct. 10 in New York.
The announcement cites the Mars rovers' engineers, as well as the robots
themselves, "for overcoming great challenges in their dogged pursuit of
new discoveries on the Red Planet."
Both rovers continued for years of bonus, extended missions after
completing their prime missions in 2004. Both made important discoveries
about wet environments on ancient Mars that may have been favorable for
supporting microbial life. Spirit, which drove 4.8 miles (7.7
kilometers), ceased communications in 2010. Opportunity is still active,
has driven more than 20.8 miles (33.5 kilometers), and is currently
examining the rim of 14-mile-diameter (22-kilometer-diameter) Endeavour
crater.
The Breakthrough Mechanical Lifetime Achievement Award from Popular
Mechanics names Mars Exploration Rover mission leaders Steven Squyres,
principal investigator from Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.; John
Callas, current project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, Calif.; and Peter Theisinger and Richard Cook, former project
managers at JPL. The award states that the rovers and their team
"turned a 90-day mission into one of space exploration's longest-lasting
adventures, making stunning discoveries about the Red Planet along the
way."
For more information about the Mars Exploration Rovers, see http://www.nasa.gov/rovers and http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov . You can also follow the mission on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/marsrovers and on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/marsrovers .
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