Two years ago today, the Mars Rover Opportunity landed on the red planet. It's sister Rover, Spirit, had landed three weeks earlier, January 3, 2004.
These semi-autonomous exploring robots had been launched in July of 2003, and it was hoped that they would explore and send back data for at least 90 days. Now, two years and tens of thousands of photos later, these intrepid machines are still roving the surface of Mars, climbing hills and descending into craters.
The NASA-JPL Mars Rover web site allows geeks like me to look at the latest raw pictures that each rover has sent, and to read their day-to-day progress in science and exploration. To you they may be just pictures of sand and rocks, but to me they are a glimpse of a new world, an unexplored frontier waiting to be discovered.
I hope you will look at a few of these images and enjoy some of the delight and wonder that I receive when I am able to get close and personal with a distant planet.
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