Projects: Space Information
Celebrating Five Years of Roaming the Red Planet
Spirit's view from the Husband Hill summit, sol 618
This panorama was produced by an international team of four amateurs from Navcam images captured by Spirit from the summit of Husband Hill.
Credit: Aviation Week / Marco Di Lorenzo, Doug Ellison, Bernhard Braun, and Kenneth Kremer, from NASA / JPL images |
Five years ago, two plucky, robotic explorers -- Spirit and Opportunity -- landed on Mars and began remarkable journeys of discovery. The nominal 90-day mission of the Mars Exploration Rovers has now stretched into half a decade, and the two rovers continue to send back breathtaking images from an alien world.
The Planetary Society and its members are part of this historic mission. Each of the two MER landers carried a DVD provided to NASA by The Planetary Society. These Messages from Earth contained the names of the then-current members of The Planetary Society as well as those of millions of other people who wanted to send part of themselves to Mars.
Learn more about our Messages
from Earth and how you can be involved »
The Planetary Society is connected with the rovers more ways: the Society's
new president, Jim Bell,
is the leader of the Panoramic Camera color imaging team for the Mars Exploration
Rovers. Bell -- who has written two books about the rovers' adventures on Mars "Postcards
from Mars" and "Mars 3-D" -- assumed the helm of The Planetary
Society in October 2008.
Another Planetary Society contribution to the mission was Vice-President Bill
Nye's suggestion that the camera calibration targets on the rovers be made
into sundials. MER Principal Investigator Steve Squyres agreed, and Louis
Friedman coined the motto that was written on each MarsDial: "Two
Worlds, One Sun." Now,
wherever the rovers roam, each carries with it an age-old measurement of time.
However, since the rovers are moving platforms, the MarsDials have no hour markings. That's where the Planetary Society's Student Astronauts played a role. During the time of the MER landings, 16 young people from 12 countries worked at JPL in four-person teams to process the MarsDial images, adding the hour markings. These talented students, who ranged in age from 13-17, were the third group of young engineers and scientists that The Planetary Society engaged in hands-on space exploration programs.
Find out where these young people are now »
The Planetary Society even helped name the rovers though a contest we ran with the LEGO Corporation and NASA. Sofi Collis -- then just 9 years old -- came up with the winning entry of “Spirit” and “Opportunity.”
For all five years, The Planetary Society has been closely following the adventures of these Martian explorers on our website, blog, and on Planetary Radio, and we will continue to do so.
We can’t wait to see what’s going to happen next!
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Each of the two Mars Exploration Rover spacecraft carried a DVD provided to NASA by The Planetary Society. This was only the second time that privately contributed hardware flew on a U.S. planetary mission. (The first was The Planetary Society’s Mars Microphone on the Mars Polar Lander.) The DVDs were mounted to the Spirit and Opportunity landers. Each rover acquired several images of the individual DVDs before embarking on their historic journeys across Mars, leaving the landers and the DVDs behind.
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The Mars Exploration Rovers each carry an identical sundial, approximately three inches square. Space artist Jon Lomberg (a Planetary Society Advisor) designed the face of the MarsDial, and Louis Friedman, Executive Director of The Planetary Society, coined the MarsDial's motto: Two Worlds, One Sun. Their primary function is as calibration targets for the high-resolution Panoramic Cameras aboard each rover, so they are imaged frequently over the course of the mission. But these thousands of images of the MarsDials with their moving shadows calso serve to remind the public that Mars and Earth truly are two worlds with one Sun.
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The Name the Rovers contest provided students with the opportunity to find a place in history by naming the Mars Exploration Rovers. The contest was managed by the LEGO Company and The Planetary Society in conjuction with NASA. Nearly 10,000 entries were received. LEGO and The Planetary Society winnowed these to 34 contest winners, whose entries and supporting essays were forwarded to NASA for their consideration. NASA selected the Grand Prize Winner, 9-year-old Sofi Collis, for her entry of “Spirit” and “Opportunity,” announcing the new names just before Spirit’s launch, on June 7, 2003.
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The students of today are the explorers of tomorrow! With the Red Rover Goes to Mars project, The Planetary Society and the LEGO Company partnered to provide hands-on opportunities for students around the world to participate directly in real missions to Mars. In 2001, the 9 Student Scientists became the first members of the public to direct a camera aboard a spacecraft orbiting another world, NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor. In 2002, the 8 Student Navigators trained for the Mars Exploration Rover mission through a two-day training program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) with the FIDO prototype rover. And in 2004, the 16 Student Astronauts joined the science team at JPL to participate directly in the daily operations of Spirit and Opportunity. Through their online journals, the Student Astronauts served as Mars exploration ambassadors to the world at large.
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