They even named Opportunity's planned arrival point at Endeavour crater after the sister robot. Opportunity is headed to Spirit Point, a vista at the southern point of a ridge called Cape York on the western side of the crater.
"Spirit achieved far more than we ever could have hoped when we designed her," Steve Squyres of Cornell University, the principal investigator for the rovers, said in a statement. "This name will be a reminder that we need to keep pushing as hard as we can to make new discoveries with Opportunity. The exploration of Spirit Point is the next major goal for us to strive for."
The Spirit and Opportunity rovers have made countless discoveries on Mars, including detailed investigations into how flowing water shaped the planet's surface in the ancient past.
The rovers originally had a 90-day mission. Poor Spirit got mired in Martian soil and eventually shut down, killed off by the Martian winter and pronounced dead this summer--but with years of science under her belt. Opportunity continues to chug along, adding to our knowledge of the Red Planet. Here's wishing the folks of NASA and their intrepid robot a lot of fun and discovery in the time to come.
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