“”image was taken by the Saturn-orbiting Cassini spacecraft””
Man o’ man. Can we build cool stuff, or what? Cassini lasted over a decade, flying in and around Saturn’s rings and moons.
The Mars rover Opportunity was scheduled to last, at least, 90 days. It lasted just a wee bit longer, over 14 years. The latest Mars rovers are Curiosity and Perseverance. They are both the size of an SUV, and nuke powered. While Opportunity depended upon the Sun for energy,
Curiosity and Perseverance have no such restrictions. Opportunity’s solar panels would become covered with Martian dust, and less energy was the result. Fortunately, Mars has swirling dust devils that would clean off the dust from time to time.
Curiosity has been truckin’ on Mars for 10 years. Perseverance landed just 2 years ago. Attached to Perseverance was a glorious experiment. A small helicopter device to determine if flying is possible in the Martian atmosphere. Scientists, real scientists, were not sure flying was possible. The little ‘copter that could’ is named Ingenuity. If it flew, they estimated it might last 30 days. Well...like other JPL* successes, Ingenuity is still flying today. Also on the Perseverance rover is an oxygen experiment called Moxie. Mars’ atmosphere is mostly C02. Moxie has proven that we can crack the C02 molecules and create, produce oxygen. Instead of having to bring massive amounts of oxygen to Mars, we can make it ourselves.
*JPL is the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It is well worth an internet search to read about all we have done.
View larger. | A selfie of the Chinese Mars rover Zhurong (center), with its lander (right), taken by the deployable Tianwen-1 Remote Camera on August 30, 2021. Image via China News Service/ YouTube/ Wikimedia Commons. Has the rover's
From EarthSky email: "Chinese Mars rover not moving. Is it kaput?
The Chinese Mars rover Zhurong appears not to have moved for about 6 months. Has its mission ended? There's been no official word about the rover from CNSA - the Chinese space agency - since May of 2022. That's when the rover entered a dormant state in anticipation of a long, cold and dusty Martian winter. Has the mission ended?
Comment: It appears the Chinese modeled their Martian rover on a Giant Chicken. Perhap the hope was to determine if a domed poultry farm could be set up to support a future Mars colony! The Lander was built to resemble a giant waterbug, a tasty source of fast growing protein! (Yes my comment is satire!)