[0] http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/saving-nasas-stereo-b-th...
Kind of had a funny mental image of the team wrapping up the shut-down process. Then, recently, all of them still at NASA get a calendar notification from the past: "SETERO-B about to return from behind the sun - go try and jump start it!" and they get back on the case.
The total cost of building, launching, landing and operating the rovers on the surface for the initial 90-sol primary mission was US$820 million.[4] Since the rovers have continued to function beyond their initial 90 sol primary mission, they have each received five mission extensions. The fifth mission extension was granted in October 2007, and ran to the end of 2009.[4][5] The total cost of the first four mission extensions was $104 million, and the fifth mission extension is expected to cost at least $20 million.[4]
Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) lost contact with Spirit after last hearing from the rover on March 22, 2010 and continued attempts to regain communications lasted until May 25, 2011, bringing the elapsed mission time to 6 years 2 months 19 days, or over 25 times the original planned mission duration.[9]
I worked on a satellite that was launched in 2003 and had a lifetime of 3 years. It operated until at least 2012 when the Air Force decided it was done paying for the downlink, but the satellite itself was still in pretty good condition.
> "In 2019, the spacecraft will be far enough from the sun
> that we could image it directly with Hubble and figure
> out the rate of spin," said Ossing.
https://www.youtube.com/user/Suspicious0bservers
(Today's news, mentioning the return of stereo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhSCMR0YP8Q )
> The STEREO Missions Operations team plans further recovery processes to assess observatory health, re-establish attitude control
Did they mean altitude? What does attitude mean?