M2K4†… 5… 6… 7… 8… 9…
The Red Planet is a harsh mistress; our plucky rover Spirit has been in a mayday situation since May Day, 1 May '09. The scrappy little robot is stuck in devilishly loose soil, no doubt an ingeniously disguised Martian booby trap. Fear not, the big brains at N.A.S.A.'s Jet Propulsion Laboratory are already simulation testing solutions in a faux Martian sandbox in sunny Pasadena: Free Spiritlink.





Elsewhere on Mars, another magnificent mechanical minion, Opportunity, has chanced upon a potentially non-Martian rock: meteoritelink. "Block Island" was spotted during Opportunity's lonely trek to the crater Endeavour, total transit time to which will amount to nearly two years. How fantastic would it be if we send those marvelous machines to Mars only to have them find a wayward piece of the Earth?





†"M2K4" was devised by N.A.S.A. for the originally 90-sol Spirit and Opportunity missions, M2K4, Mars 2004. A sol is a Martian day, the duration of a single planetary rotation, lasting twenty-four hours thirty-seven minutes; both rovers landed in January 2004 so had things gone as planned the mission would never have lasted beyond 2K4. The Mars Exploration Rovers have endured for ever so much more than those ninety sols. M2K4 has given way to M2K9, and there is every reason to believe Spirit and Opportunity will continue their expeditionary scientific research into 2010 and beyond. M2K∞?