In case you missed it, the Mars Rovers are celebrating their second anniversary (in Earth years) on Mars. Spirit’s landing on Mars was on January 3, 2004 and Opportunity’s landing was on January 24th that same year. Pretty amazing, considering that the original mission was expected to only last three months and was on a cheap budget (relative to NASA’s budget).

I haven’t seen too much about the anniversary on NASA’s official site, but maybe they will post something today. Space.com on the other hand has a nice article they put out, titled The Rovers That Just Won’t Stop:

One of the things that helped prolong the lives of the rovers was the repeated removal of the dust that gathered on the solar panels of each of the robots. Occasional wind events cleared dust from the wing-like panels, thereby increasing the amount of energy yielded by the solar collectors to power the robots.