posted on May, 25 2005 @ 04:07 PM
Jesus H Crist.
The rovers indeed outlasted their design lifetime. This in itlsef is an achievement. They also provided about same amount of data as a manned mission
would. Heck, if they were scaled up to the weight of a manned vehicle, that would be a world-class lab and they would have outdone the humans
100:1.
The experience with this rovers in invaluable. Future exploration vehicles will benefit from it.
It's just amazing how casually people brush off the feat of landing a sophisticated robot on a hostile world a billion miles away, which went on to
send pretty solid scientific data and pictures. Gosh. You ever studied engineering?
Kudos to NASA.