Happy Birthday Spirit!

Full-Circle 'Bonestell' Panorama from Spirit (Annotated). Image Credit: NASA/
JPL/Cornell University/New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science

Five years ago mission teams at NASA where making a major effort to monitor the status of the Spirit rover that was on its way to land in Gusev Crater on Mars. During the entry and landing, the spacecraft with Spirit aboard maintained radio contact with flight controllers at JPL through a series of tones designed transmit the status of the lander. The flight team was even able to detect that the lander was bouncing on the surface of Mars, secure in the inflated airbags. But the tones suddenly stopped and there was no signal from the lander for several minutes. The flight control room erupted when the spacecraft sent the signal that it was sitting safely on the Red Planet.

A video of what has happened during the five years of Spirit and Oportunity's missions on Mars is available on http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/video/index.cfm?id=795.