Jan. 25 - (Crossing fingers) Live on CNN from JPL in Pasadena, ping, radar, bouncing, re-acquired signal, still rolling, stopped moving, unwrapping.

I think we can call the Opportunity landing a success!

(I doubt I can make it to 1 am PST for Surveyor to transmit to earth. Damn.)

UPDATE: The photos on the NASA page and Rover page are pretty impressive and worth waiting to load.

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Jan. 24 - Spirit Recovers on Red Planet:

Scientists said they managed to reset Spirit's computer and put the rover into what's called "cripple" mode to bypass software problems.

Opportunity should land at 12:05 a.m. tomorrow.

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Jan. 23 - Rover stops barking:

Initially, the scientists blamed weather woes on Earth. They now believe the rover is experiencing hardware or software glitches.

ScrappleFace has another explanation.

This just in: the rover managed to get a limited message out. Go Spirit!

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Jan. 5 - Update on Spirit and several links including a directory for the NASA site if you've had delays logging on.

American Digest has On First Looking Out of NASA's Rover. Wonderful poem.

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Jan. 4 - Mars was pleasantly surprised to see Sojourner's big brother Spirit emerge from that big bouncy thing last night and is graciously permitting him to stay and take pictures. Who could have figured the God of War to be such a ham? (Anyone who watched Xena or Hercules, come to think of it. Oh well.)

The NASA Mars Exploration Rover Mission website is here. I'm off to work, so don't know if they have a site dedicated to Spirit as they had years back for Sojourner.

Kidding aside, the difficulties in landing craft on Mars highlights just how dangerous this adventure will be for human explorers. Here's to the future!

Looks like Toronto is back to more seasonable weather (which would still have people in Ottawa, Montreal and Edmonton sneering at us as softies.)

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Jan. 3 - Rover to land on Mars tonight. Uh huh. We'll see.

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