Amazing! I hope Oppy holds out through the winter 'cause there's a whole lotta rocks that need looking at in Endeavour Crater.

I always hated getting to really interesting stuff at the end of a traverse. The pack would already be full of samples, the feet yearned for the boots to be off, only to be faced with an outcrop that deserves a whole day of study.

Oppy approaches "beer:thirty", the symbolic end of the field day. Spirit has already gone to bed and a well earned rest.

As an aside, I found The HabitableZone a week after Oppy landed, while searching for more information and a desire to bring my observations to the conversation.

Eight years.

And now there is a new extraterrestrial robot field geologist on the way to the red planet. With even better toys. I can't wait!

Will Oppy last long enough that there are again two geologist rovers on Mars?