NASA Rover Marks Five Years On Mars

The US space agency’s Mars rovers ‘Spirit and Opportunity’ this month mark their fifth anniversary on the Red Planet, where they have endured harsh conditions and revealed a deluge of information.

The twin robots, which landed on Mars three weeks apart in January 2004, were initially expected to have just 90-day missions, but have since sent back to Earth a quarter-million images, toured mountains and craters and survived violent dust storms.“The American taxpayer was told three months for each rover was the prime mission plan. The twins have worked almost 20 times that long,” said NASA assistant administrator Ed Weiler in a statement.

“That’s an extraordinary return of investment in these challenging budgetary times.”

The rovers, which along with 250,000 images have sent back to Earth some 36 gigabytes of data, have greatly advanced NASA’s understanding of Mars’ geology, including peeks into the planet’s wet and habitable past.

Analysts say the wealth of information data will keep scientists busy for years as they further unravel the vast banks of data.

Since 2004 the machines have covered 21km of Mars’ characteristic red rock desert, driving inch by inch to avoid chasms and rocky obstacles, picking up samples and snapping images to beam back to mission control on Earth.

“These rovers are incredibly resilient considering the extreme environment the hardware experiences every day,” said John Callas, project manager for Spirit and Opportunity.

“We realise that a major rover component on either vehicle could fail at any time and end a mission with no advance notice, but on the other hand, we could accomplish the equivalent duration of four more prime missions on each rover in the year ahead.”

While the machines have had relatively balmy 20 degrees Celsius summers, they have had to endure frigid extremes, where temperatures of minus-100 degrees Celsius in winter are common.

Harsh Martian winds, however, have provided an occasional cleaning job to the rovers’ solar panels – critical instruments to power the machines.

This unconventional aid, however, has not been reliable, with the Spirit machine’s panels hardly clear enough to survive its third southern hemisphere winter, which ended in December.

Although the $820 million project’s mission began as scientific, it has become something much larger, according to Steve Squyres of Cornell University, the rover mission’s principal investigator.

The journeys “have led to something else important,” he said. “This has turned into humanity’s first overland expedition on another planet.

“When people look back on this period of Mars exploration decades from now, Spirit and Opportunity may be considered most significant not for the science they accomplished, but for the first time we truly went exploring across the surface of Mars.”

The continuing wealth of data provided by the rovers is a welcome holdover for the US space agency, which was forced to delay a landmark mission to Mars by 26 months last month.

The $2.3 billion Mars Science Laboratory is now expected to be launched in 2011.

Launch opportunities for Mars come only every 26 months, when the planets are in right alignment

Frugal Brides

“This is a recession-proof market,” says Donald Foste, group sales director for Occidental, a hotel chain with properties in Aruba and the Dominican Republic. “Brides are going to get married regardless of what’s happening in the economy.” At SuperClubs, the Jamaica-based operator of about a dozen all-inclusive resorts under the Grand Lido, Breezes and Hedonism names in the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Curaçao and the Bahamas, executives hope weddings will help offset the dip in overall bookings, says marketing director Zein Nakash.

Many people will look at all-inclusives such as SuperClubs because “you know exactly what your wedding is going to cost you,” she says. The Caribbean’s destination wedding industry hopes to thrive on budget-minded lovebirds such as Tilly Lashel Gant and Terrance Flaggs of St. Louis. For $3,600 at Riu Ochos Rios, Jamaica, the couple is receiving airfare and lodging for two, an upgraded honeymoon suite, food and drinks, and the wedding ceremony. Picking the offseason date of April 29 helped them lower their rate. “You can’t beat that,” says Gant, 31. “It is so much cheaper than having a traditional wedding at home, where the cost can skyrocket.”

The destination wedding market is so promising that some Caribbean hotels are trying to boost their share. SuperClubs is taking out TV ads. It’s also attending more bridal shows. And at the Wyndham hotel and casino on Nassau’s Cable Beach in the Bahamas, manager Jeffry Humes had the hotel renovated specifically to please brides, with a new boardwalk and gazebo with ocean views for wedding photos.. The hotel has 200 weddings planned this year, double last year’s count. The hotel also hopes to lure more cruiseship passengers who disembark in Nassau with a desire to exchange vows on a beach, says Lisa Harris, who handles the hotel’s wedding sales. The hotel plans to charge couples $300 to use the gazebo, she says.

Still, the economy is having an effect:

•Smaller wedding parties. Because wedding guests typically pay their own airfare and lodging, hoteliers expect to see fewer people attend. SuperClubs expects a 25% decline in guest numbers, Nakash says. Because of the economy, Gant and Flaggs expect few people to join them in Ocho Rios. She says her mother can’t afford to join them, and their bridesmaid and best man have yet to book their trip. They’re prepared to do without a bridal party.

•Fewer extras. At upscale Paradisus in the Dominican Republic, which handles nearly 400 weddings a year, couples typically spent about $40,000 last year. But this year, Paradisus executive Maria Gomez expects they’ll stop at $30,000, with fewer flowers and extra events such as welcome parties, bridesmaid lunches and spa treatments.

•More price quotes. Brides who are “being more frugal” are taking more time to book weddings, Foste says. Brides used to book their wedding at an Occidental hotel within three weeks of requesting information, but now they’re taking up to six weeks so they can shop more, he says. Melvin Grant, a Bahamian minister, says he’s marrying more people on free public beaches. Couples are also calling him directly to lower the price. “Two years ago, they didn’t care,” he says. “But since last year, they’ve been cutting corners.”