These two robots tie for second best robot. They are Spirit and Opportunity!
WHIRRRRR! These two bots are on Mars. Expected to last only three months when they touched down on the planet in January 2004, the rovers are still going two years later, sending back 200 megabits of data a day. NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) is an ongoing robotic space mission involving two rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, exploring the planet Mars.
It all began in 2003 with the sending of the two rovers—MER-A Spirit and MER-B Opportunity to explore the Martian surface and geology.
The mission's objective was to search for and characterize a wide range of rocks and soils that hold clues to past water activity on Mars. Since the rovers have continued to function beyond their original 90 day mission, they have each received five other extension missions. The fifth mission was granted in October 2007, and ran to the end of 2009. The total cost of the first four mission extensions was $104 million, and the fifth
mission cost at least $20 million.
On May 1, 2009, during its fifth mission extension, Spirit became stuck in soft soil on Mars. After nine months of attempts to get the robot out, NASA announced on January 26, 2010 that Spirit was being retasked as a stationary science platform. This would enable Spirit to assist scientists in ways that a mobile platform could not, such as detecting "wobbles" in the planet's rotation that would indicate a liquid core. NASA 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. Two asteroids have been named in their honor: 37452 Spirit and 39382 Opportunity.
Read more at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Exploration_Rover
WHIRRRRR! These two bots are on Mars. Expected to last only three months when they touched down on the planet in January 2004, the rovers are still going two years later, sending back 200 megabits of data a day. NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) is an ongoing robotic space mission involving two rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, exploring the planet Mars.
It all began in 2003 with the sending of the two rovers—MER-A Spirit and MER-B Opportunity to explore the Martian surface and geology.
The mission's objective was to search for and characterize a wide range of rocks and soils that hold clues to past water activity on Mars. Since the rovers have continued to function beyond their original 90 day mission, they have each received five other extension missions. The fifth mission was granted in October 2007, and ran to the end of 2009. The total cost of the first four mission extensions was $104 million, and the fifth
mission cost at least $20 million.
On May 1, 2009, during its fifth mission extension, Spirit became stuck in soft soil on Mars. After nine months of attempts to get the robot out, NASA announced on January 26, 2010 that Spirit was being retasked as a stationary science platform. This would enable Spirit to assist scientists in ways that a mobile platform could not, such as detecting "wobbles" in the planet's rotation that would indicate a liquid core. NASA 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. Two asteroids have been named in their honor: 37452 Spirit and 39382 Opportunity.
Read more at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Exploration_Rover