re: Plans for DEMISE of ROVERS?
I don't know of any such plans, but as long as they can get funding for some personnel and Deep Space Network (DSN) time to collect any environmental data, I'm all for it. DSN time is a somewhat limited and expensive resource, but if they can get usable data then they should do whatever they can to keep collecting it. IIRC, they ended up turning off the Apollo scientific packages while they were still functioning. Damned shame.
As it is, the rovers have lasted about 3 times longer than planned. Fortunately, they seem to be funded to cover the longer than anticipated mission support costs. It'd be near criminal to deactivate the rovers while they're still functioning so well.
