{"id":10,"date":"2005-05-31T23:43:16","date_gmt":"2005-06-01T04:43:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.clank.org\/blog\/?p=10"},"modified":"2005-05-31T23:43:16","modified_gmt":"2005-06-01T04:43:16","slug":"rocks-hills-dust-and-more-rocks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clank.org\/blog\/2005\/05\/31\/rocks-hills-dust-and-more-rocks\/","title":{"rendered":"Rocks, hills, dust&#8230; and more rocks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As we wrap up the final few minutes of May 2005, I thought it would be appropriate to bring up some news from the beginning of April: the Mars rover mission <a href=\"http:\/\/www.space.com\/news\/050405_mars_rovers.html\">has been extended<\/a>.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nNASA has announced that it would fund operations through September 2006. The durability of the robotic explorers seems to have played a part.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<div>Spirit and Opportunity were originally designed for a three-month effort. Engineers knew all along that if nothing unexpected happened, they could last longer. But few expected them to be still roving after more than 14 months.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Now, as the rovers pass 16 months of operation, they are still <a href=\"http:\/\/www.space.com\/missionlaunches\/050524_rovers_update.html\">performing admirably<\/a> in spite of some setbacks. In fact, there&#8217;s hope that the rovers will be operational when the <a href=\"http:\/\/marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov\/mro\/\">Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter<\/a> arrives in March 2006.<\/p>\n<p>One question that&#8217;s on my mind &#8211; if a planet-engulfing dust storm obscures most of the sunlight, could these intrepid machines survive?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As we wrap up the final few minutes of May 2005, I thought it would be appropriate to bring up some news from the beginning of April: the Mars rover mission has been extended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p706FA-a","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clank.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clank.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clank.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clank.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clank.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.clank.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clank.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clank.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clank.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}