A year later, NASA's rovers still exploring Mars

A year after their Mars landing, the explorers that were supposed to last only 3 months are still on the move.

A year after the first of NASA's twin rovers landed on Mars, scientists celebrated the robotic explorers that were supposed to last only about three months but are still roaming a planet with a reputation for swallowing spacecraft.

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Officials at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory recalled the stress leading up to the rover Spirit's landing on Jan. 3, 2004, followed three weeks later by the rover Opportunity, and the mission's subsequent historic discoveries of rocks altered by ancient water activity that suggest Mars once could have been hospitable to life.

"I never, ever would have imagined the opportunity to be literally standing here a year later and say yet again, we're back and we're still on Mars," NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe told mission staff filling a JPL auditorium yesterday.

O'Keefe called the rovers "extraordinary pieces of machinery" and said they had made profound discoveries, especially Opportunity's finding that Mars' Meridiani Planum region once held large amounts of surface water.

"What it tells us is that the climate, the atmosphere of our closest neighbour was once dramatically different and perhaps conducive to life," he said. "Understanding why that changed may well provide a whole new perspective of our own place in the solar system, in this galaxy and indeed in the broader universe."

The two successful landings in less than a month and the rovers' defiance of the fiercely cold and dusty Martian environment stand in stark contrast to high-profile failures of some of the space agency's previous Mars missions.