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Husband Hill Summit

Husband Hill Summit
Husband Hill Summit After an arduous hike that took more than a year, Spirit summited Husband Hill in the Columbia Hills in late August 2005, and then acquired the more than 650 images for this panorama. It was an amazing feat of engineering especially considering the MER class rovers weren’t actually designed to climb mountains, or even small hills. The Columbia Hills and Husband Hill are named for the Columbia space shuttle and its STS-107 Commander Rick Husband. The shuttle and her crew disintegrated on their return to Earth Feb. 1, 2003. During the mission’s fourth Martian winter Spirit went into hibernation and never came out of it. NASA declared her mission over in May 2011. NASA / JPL-Caltech / Cornell / ASU