opportunity and spirit mars rovers

Analog trials like this will help prepare scientists and their gear for real missions to the Red Planet.

NASA's Mars rover Opportunity rover has been photographed by a probe orbiting the Red Planet. The new photo shows Opportunity near the Martian crater.

Starting next week, NASA's Mars rover Opportunity will get a temporary respite from its bossy operators here on Earth. But the rover won't be able to slack off.

NASA's mired Spirit rover remains in a nine-month slumber as it begins the eighth year of its Mars mission, but its twin, Opportunity, keeps chugging along.

With spring on Mars in full swing, NASA is taking advantage of the Martian season's ever-longer periods of daylight to try to reawaken its stuck rover, Spirit, after months of silence.

As folks here on Earth prepare to mark the passage of another year, two robots a world away are creeping up on a big milestone of their own: seven years on the surface of Mars.

A Q & A with John Callas, Mars Exploration Rover project manager, about the achievements and legacy of NASA's twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity, which dropped onto the Red Planet in January 2004.

NASA's Mars rover Opportunity has its plans for New Year's Eve all sorted out — poking around a football-field-size crater called Santa Maria.

Two new movie clips transport regular Earthbound folks to the Martian surface, giving them a rover's-eye view of a bluish Martian sunset and a partial solar eclipse.

NASA's Mars rover Opportunity is chugging toward some interesting mineral deposits on the rim of a fresh crater, guided by a sharp set of eyes from above.