Long past the time their systems were expected to quit, the Mars Rover robots, Spirit and Opportunity, continue to roll. These two are real robots on a real mission, collecting and transmitting data on Mars. NASA provides an excellent site of information and imagery on its web site. Visit http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/home/
The distance to Mars makes for slow conversation with the robots. "The average smallest distance between Mars and the Earth is 78 million kilometers or 48 million miles (and the average greatest distance is 378 million kilometers or 235 million miles)" (Astronomical Institute, 2003). Divide the distance from Mars by the speed of light, then by 60 to get minutes. If 120,000,000 miles aways, a message takes 11 minutes to get there and 11 for a reply. The location of the robots can be found by clicking the Spacecraft link at mars.google.com.
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If anyone can find a web site that reports the current distance between Earth and Mars, please put the address in a comment.
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