Looks like Spirit and Opportunity will be going into winter hibernation soon

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3872975.stm
http://www.astrobio.net/news/modules.php?o...order=0&thold=0
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5353015/

The scary part of the BBC article was this:

"Dr Arvidson said July was the last full month the rover team would be based at JPL. After that, mission scientists will use teleconferencing and distributed processing of data to carry the mission forward.

This would also help to make the mission more cost-effective, said Dr Arvidson: "[Money] is a huge factor. We have to minimise the costs as much as possible.""


I interpret that to mean we kiss the near daily raw image updates goodbye. We'll probably see a posting of thousands of images every 6~12 months similar to MGS (which is behind schedule on a consistant basis). It will be very sad indeed as I have grown accustomed to having new images to view.

Perhaps someone with more eloquence than I could draft an online petition requesting on behalf of the public that JPL/NASA continue posting raw images to the web on at least a weekly basis. I'd be sure to 'sign' it.

Eric P / MizarKey

hmmm..I never thought about that, I thought the process of puting out the RAW data was automated.

Heres a quote from another article:

"I think it is entirely possible that we will make it through the Martian winter with at least one of these vehicles," said Steve Squyres, the chief scientist for the Mars rover mission. "If we can survive the deepest part of the winter ... and the situation starts to improve, conceivably we could go months beyond that. So it's not inconceivable that we could go into 2005."

http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20040707-031016-2765r

Its not really clear how long they intend to "hibernate" so to speak. I think September was a particularly critical time for the mission in terms of power, but how and when do things improve after that?