Although designed and expected to work for an estimated 90 days, the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity have been working now for 5 years. It's a great NASA success story and everyone involved in the mission (including the rovers) have performed beyond expectation. The rovers have provided loads of data for scientists to analyse and valuable lessons are being learned such as the behaviour of the Martian atmopshere. There's a lot of dust in the atmosphere of Mars and over time the solar panels of the rovers accumulate that dust which in turn reduces operational power. The strange thing is, on occasion the solar panels receive a gust of wind from the Martian atmosphere which cleans the panels and boosts power. Not many people expected the rovers to last this long but they did. NASA gets a thumbs up on this one.
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