NASA Spirit and Oppurtunity Mission - Essay Example

Their landing came a mere four months after Apollo 11’s first lunar landing.”(nasa.gov) The program went into an extended sortie of robotic explorations of what was originally a short stint of just three months. A chronology of events had described in exciting details its latest day-by-day, year-round movements monitored by ground control in such areas of operations already named and identified as “Troy” to wit: “05-January-2010 Toe-In Maneuver Before Drive, 04-February-2010 Improving Northerly Tilt, 09-February-2010 Spirit Parks for the Winter, 22-Jun-2010 Spirit Standing By At Troy, 04-Aug-2010 Spirit in ‘Sweep & Beep” Mode and 12-Aug-2010 ‘Sweep & Beep’ Campaign Continues…”(nasa.gov) This latest event involving Opportunity exemplifies the usefulness of the Mars rovers program and the important objectives identified with such move.

The extended program that has already made another scientific probe that had sent new information regarding the atmosphere in Mars. “Images that NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity took at the end of an 81-meter (266-foot) drive on Sept. 16 reveal a dark rock about 31 meters (102) feet away.” (nasa.gov) “The dark color, rounded texture and the way it is perched on the surface all make it look like an iron meteorite,” said science team member Matt Golombek of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, The third and probably one of the most important exploits of the latest scientific program is the employ of the rovers mission in cloud computing: “The project team that built and operated the Mars rovers’ Spirit and Opportunity has become the first NASA space mission to use cloud computing for daily mission operations.”(nasa.gov) The importance of “Opportunity and Spirit” Mars rovers program is giving more hope of increasing our knowledge of the solar system.

This idea is not far-fetched with the initiative of the the cloud team at Microsoft Corporation,