Exploration of Mars by remote control continues as NASA rovers Spirit and Opportunity defy adversity and entropy in their trolling about the oxide planet. Each rover having completed nearly two years of service — sixfold the official requirement for mission success — usage and wear has compromised the operation of neither, Opportunity's recent reboot-breather the only geriatric stumble so far. Discoveries are made, wonders are recorded. Spirit witnessed — and then digitally recounted to us — the alien sight of not one moon but two moons, Phobos and Deimos, cutting across a black night sky. Six-wheeled geologist Opportunity has set upon site after site, just now completing the survey of an extrusion nicknamed "Lemon Rind."
Attractive for workhorse, lowest-bid machines, the Martian rovers are remarkably invested with character. Spirit napped during the day to store enough energy for its midnight stargazing; Opportunity, its conscience of a Jet Propulsion Laboratory control team wary of overexertion in the red desert, will be taking its next several days of rock-hunting a little more easily. There are no men in interplanetary space today, and yet it cannot be said that man is not in space.