Celebrating a new type of hero

Technology has changed so many aspects of our lives that we don't even think about it much, anymore.

Now it's even changed how we think about heroes.

Day after day, we hear about "drone" attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan, with unmanned aerial vehicles, taking out insurgents with remote-control missile attacks.

It's a far cry from the warfare of Vietnam, or even Desert Storm, inflicting damage to the enemy while seated in office chairs back in the United States. It doesn't create many heroes, but neither does it leave injured pilots in enemy hands.

A peaceful drama a few hundred million miles away, however, has created heroes of the mechanical kind.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory finally gave up trying to get the Spirit rover to move, leaving it mired in sand with two broken wheels.

With its twin, Opportunity, Spirit landed on Mars six years ago, designed to roam around the red planet for 90 days.

"We voided the warranty so long ago," said Steve Squyres of Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., principal investigator for the two rovers. "Anybody who tells you that they expected Spirit to last this long, I think, is lying."

Spirit isn't done, however, and controllers are trying to position the vehicle in the best possible angle toward the sun to feed its top-mounted solar arrays to collect enough power to keep it alive, as a stationary science station, through the Martian winter.

Spirit traveled 4.7 miles from its landing spot; Opportunity, still healthy and mobile on the other side of the planet, has traveled more than twice that far.

Along the way, they've yielded enough data for researchers to publish 55 scientific papers.

No, robots don't carry the emotional attachment that living, breathing astronauts or fighter pilots do, but they can do the job much more safely and cheaply.