I wonder if there is any "life" contaminating Spirit, brought from Earth?
Does anyone know what the delay is between sending Spirit a command, and finding out what Spirit actually did? I mean, even if it's only 10 minutes each way, that's still a 20 minute delay between telling the craft to move and finding out your Firestones blew out and you rolled into a ditch.
Also, what is the expected life of the craft? I would think they would have rechargeable batteries and high energy solar collectors. If it ran out of power for locomotion, it should be able to just sit still for awhile and recharge, correct? Theoretically, it should be viable for the life of the batteries, no?
cjhsa..
I believe there is no life contamination by Spirit.
In a display of the Mars24 program, it is shown that the distance is currently 10min22sec, which varies along with the distance between the Earth and Mars. The viewer is almost always lives in the earth time, as one understands the event brought by light from a quasar of several billion light years as if it were the current event.
Currently I cannot reply about the expected life of the craft, but it is noted that the planned length of the mission is to be at least 90 days.
You can download a scaled-down version of the program that NASA scientists use to operate Spirit and Opportunity.
(Java required for using tools.)
You know the following site is very impressive about information on MER's.
http://spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/statustextonly.html
