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.