Talk about being over budget.

The Mars Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, were blasted off and landed on Mars over 14 months ago.  They were supposed to work for 90 days, only 3 months.  14 months later they are still chugging along.

Even the Spirit, which had a bum wheel and was coated in dust has gotten a new lease on life.  It's back up to nearly full power, and even the gimp wheel has shaken itself back into place and is working fine.  For a while there Spirit even had to drive backwards to limit the trouble the wheel would cause.

Opportunity is showing a little age now for the first time, but both rovers are doing great.  So now NASA has to pay to keep the information coming in.  NASA has extended funding for the Rover Project for the next 18 months.  No one is sure how long the little buggies are going to last.  But we are hopeful that we can still get a huge amount of information out of them.

Given the fact that there are no oil changes, recharge stations, tow trucks or maintenance checks, when these things break it's probably going to happen suddenly.  A wheel will lock up, although the thing can continue with a couple of bad wheels, the batteries will croak, or something will physically break.  Eventually they will stop.

But until they do, the Rovers and the scientists are fully funded.  For the next 18 months anyway.  If they last longer than that, then NASA's really going to be scratching their heads about what do with them.

Already the scientists grab coffee and donuts and go try to figure out what they can have them do...  They've done everything they were designed for.  90 days of info and finding conclusive proof of a history of water on Mars.  Done.  Did that.  What next?  Now the Rovers are creating maps of the surface and stopping for the occasional photo-op or soil sample.  Which is all important.  We still need tons more information if we are ever going to build a McDonald's there.

One of the stories that I've followed closely in the media was the Martian trek of the twin landers, Spirit and Opportunity.  As the mission went on, and was nearing the 90-day goal, and expected end of the mission, the NASA controllers started getting more daring in what they wanted the little guys to do.

After many calculations and tests and heavy breathing exercises, the NASA controllers slowly crept Spirit into a large crater, to explore, and die.  Well..  it didn't die.  It kept going, and going.

After fully learning all that they could learn in the crater, and having a perfectly viable robot on their hands, they had to figure how to get the thing out!  Slowly, and backwards, Spirit climbed out of the crater and went on exploring the planet.

Sounding more and more like a Douglas Adams 5-part Trilogy, the Spirit and Opportunity kept going.  Celebrating it's one year anniversary of the start of the 3-month mission, it kept going.  Spirit gets a gummed up wheel, and it keeps going.  Opportunity doesn't even have any problems, it just keeps going.

I was a more than a little disappointed when they announced a couple months ago that Spirits life may be coming to an end.  The solar panels were getting more and more coated with the fine red Martian dust that was affecting the ability to recharge the batteries.  Opportunity was considerably cleaner and they said it looked like it just blasted off of the showroom floor.

But, everyone rejoice!!  Spirit was the victim of a hit-and-run dust-devil that polished the solar panels and brought the power generation from 60% capacity back up to 93%.  This gives the Spirit a new lease on life.

So, good roving, Spirit and Opportunity.  Find us some more cool stuff to look at.

Just before dawn, the HD37605b-lings wake up, stretch, and wipe their eyes with their tentacles and watch their sun, HD37605, come up.

HD37605b is the 123rd planet discovered outside of our solar system. It was discovered by the new Hobby-Eberly Telescope. It's a gas giant about 2.8 times larger than Jupiter. It's located in the Orion constellation near the bright star Betelgeuse about 140 lightyears away and announced Friday.

The planet was discovered by watching it's sun do a belly dance. The gravitational pull of a planet will cause the star to wiggle. This wiggling is how all of the planets past Jupiter in our own solar system were discovered.