NASA Celebrates Mars Rovers' 10-Year Mark Tonight: Watch Live @ 10 pm ET

Mars Rovers Celebrate 10 Years on Red Planet
NASA's twin Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, have now spent 10 years on the surface of Mars. (Image credit: NASA/JPL)

NASA's Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity landed on the Red Planet 10 years ago this month and the space agency will celebrate the milestone with a live webcast event tonight.

Spirit and Opportunity landed on Mars in January 2004 to begin a 90-day mission that continues to this day. Spirit, which landed first, went silent in March 2010, but Opportunity is still exploring a decade after reaching the Red Planet. You can watch NASA's Mars rover webcast live here beginning at 10 p.m. EST (0300 Jan. 17 GMT, 7 p.m. PST), courtesy of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

"NASA's twin rovers launched separately in 2003 and landed three weeks apart in January 2004. They completed their three-month prime missions in April 2004 and went on to perform extended missions for years," NASA officials wrote in an announcement. "Spirit and Opportunity made important discoveries about wet environments on ancient Mars that may have been favorable for supporting microbial life." [10 Amazing Mars Discoveries by Spirit & Opportunity]

Tonight's 10th anniversary event will be held at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and feature:

  • Charles Elachi, director, JPL
  • Steve Squyres, professor of astronomy, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., and principal investigator for the Mars Exploration Rover mission
  • John Callas, project manager, Mars Exploration Rover Project, JPL
  • Bill Nye, chief executive officer of the Planetary Society, Pasadena, Calif.

You can also watch the Mars rover celebration directly from NASA here: http://ustream.tv/NASAJPL

10 Years on Mars: Smithsonian Celebrates Spirit, Opportunity Rovers: Photos

If you live in the Los Angeles area, you can attend the event free of charge, though admission is on a first-come, first-serve basis. The event will begin at 7 p.m. local time in JPL's Beckman Auditorium on the California Institute of Technology campus, 1200 E. California Blvd., Pasadena, Calif.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory  has managed the missions of Spirit and Opportunity since they launched in 2003. The laboratory is also the home to the mission operations center for NASA's newer Curiosity Mars rover, which landed on the Red Planet in 2012.

The laboratory, which is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology, has set up a special website in honor of the rover anniversary here: http://mars.nasa.gov/mer10

Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or follow him @tariqjmalik and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+.

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: community@space.com.

Tariq Malik
Editor-in-Chief

Tariq is the Editor-in-Chief of Space.com and joined the team in 2001, first as an intern and staff writer, and later as an editor. He covers human spaceflight, exploration and space science, as well as skywatching and entertainment. He became Space.com's Managing Editor in 2009 and Editor-in-Chief in 2019. Before joining Space.com, Tariq was a staff reporter for The Los Angeles Times covering education and city beats in La Habra, Fullerton and Huntington Beach. In October 2022, Tariq received the Harry Kolcum Award for excellence in space reporting from the National Space Club Florida Committee. He is also an Eagle Scout (yes, he has the Space Exploration merit badge) and went to Space Camp four times as a kid and a fifth time as an adult. He has journalism degrees from the University of Southern California and New York University. You can find Tariq at Space.com and as the co-host to the This Week In Space podcast with space historian Rod Pyle on the TWiT network. To see his latest project, you can follow Tariq on Twitter @tariqjmalik.