http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2009-04

Public Events Mark Mars Rovers' Five-Year Anniversary
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
January 12, 2009

PASADENA, Calif. -- Public events during the next two weeks will share
the adventures of the still-active NASA Mars rovers Spirit and
Opportunity, which landed five years ago this month on missions
originally scheduled to last three months.

Rover mission leaders will present free, illustrated talks Thursday,
Jan. 15, and Friday, Jan. 16, in Pasadena, with the Jan. 15 event
streamed live online and archived for later viewing.

On Friday, Jan. 23, through Sunday, Jan. 25, rover team members will
give a series of talks at Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles. The
observatory will also display a full-size Mars rover model, with team
members available to answer visitors' questions.

Since landing on opposite sides of Mars during January of 2004, Spirit
and Opportunity have made important discoveries about historically wet
and violent environments on ancient Mars. They also have returned a
quarter-million images, driven more than 21 kilometers (13 miles),
climbed a mountain, descended into craters, struggled with sand traps
and aging hardware, survived dust storms, and relayed more than 36
gigabytes of data via NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter. Both rovers remain
operational for new exploration campaigns the team has planned.

The public presentations on Jan. 15 and 16, "Spirit and Opportunity:
The
Corps of Discovery for Mars Rolls On," are part of the monthly von
Kármán Lecture Series by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena,
Calif. Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., principal
investigator for the science payloads on the rovers, will deliver the
Jan. 15 talk in Beckman Auditorium on the campus of the California
Institute of Technology, Pasadena, on Michigan Avenue one block south
of
Del Mar Avenue. JPL's John Callas, project manager for the rovers,
will
deliver the Jan. 16 talk in Pasadena City College's Vosloh Forum, 1570
E. Colorado Ave.

Squyres and Callas will begin their presentations at 7 p.m. Admission
is
free, on a first-come, first-seated basis. For more information about
the lectures and the webcast of the Jan. 15 event, see
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/events/lectures.cfm?year=2009&month=1 .

At Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, the full-size rover model will
be on display in the Depths of Space gallery Jan. 23 through Jan. 25,
accompanied by rover team members from JPL. Talks about topics such as
how the team drives the rovers and what the rovers have revealed about
Mars will be presented in the observatory's Leonard Nimoy Event
Horizon
Theater. These talks, by JPL rover-team members Al Herrera, Scott
Lever,
Scott Maxwell, John Callas, Bruce Banerdt and Ashley Stroupe, are
scheduled for the following times: 7 p.m. on Jan. 23; 1:30 p.m., 4
p.m.
and 7 p.m. on Jan. 24; and 1:30 p.m. and 4 p.m. on Jan. 25.

For more information about visiting Griffith Observatory, see
http://www.griffithobs.org/ .

JPL, a division of Caltech, manages the Mars Exploration Rovers for
the
NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington. More information about
the
rovers is at http://www.nasa.gov/rovers .

Media contacts: Guy Webster/Rhea Borja 818-354-6278/0850
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
guy.webster{at}jpl.nasa.gov/rhea.r.borja{at}jpl.nasa.gov

2009-004
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