The Christmas spirit on Mars . . . in the form of a little "animal" friend

Well, something like that . . .

My first reaction when reading the first couple paragraphs of this story from Astronomy magazine was - "well Merry Chjristmas. Darn! Good things still happen in government programs." But as I got near the bottom of the second paragraph it really began to feel like this thing is alive. Oh, I don't mean the NASA scientists have really hit the artificial intelligence lodestone. It's just that their creation - their creature - feels like some sort of primitive biological life . . . see if you get that feeling when reading this short blurb.

Mars rovers roll on

Spirit and Opportunity, the twin Mars Exploration Rovers (MERs), are still operating after 7 times their design life. Mission scientists gave updates on both rovers' conditions and discoveries at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union last week in San Francisco.

Having spent 14 months climbing to the top of 270-foot-tall (82 meters) Husband Hill, Spirit is now making its way down the other side of the slope. When it gets to the bottom, the rover will crawl a quarter mile (0.4 kilometer) across the plain to examine Home Plate, a 230-foot-wide (70m) flat, hard patch that seems to be the biggest piece of unified bedrock in the area. Spirit will then hastily roll up a north-facing slope. Martian winter is coming, and Spirit must once again get onto a north-facing slope and tilt its solar array toward the dimming winter Sun in order to give it enough power to survive ...

The rest of the story can be found at http://www.astronomy.com/ - well, maybe. I'm never sure what stories they have on public availability. This is one of those sites that favors subscribers. But I'm sure if you Google "Mars rover" you'll find more. Oh - and one more thing. Did you notice the pace at which it is moving? That has its own astronomical feel to it where we're used to thing changing slowly - very slowly.

The image, btw, is true to life, but a digital creation. You can read all about it at the Astronomy Picture of the Day site here.

In evolutionary terms, what would you call this? A prequel maybe? Ok. Christmas, animals, movies - I know. I'm outa control here - tends to happen around 3 am each day ;-)