Here is an excellent article that was posted Tuesday July 31 on The Planetary Society site regarding the current condition of Spirit and Opportunity.
The image to the left is titled “Spirit at Sunset” and it is an FX, or created image of Spirit on top of a rock called Jibsheet. The image was produced using “Virtual Presence in Space” technology, developed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where the rovers were designed and built. This technology combines visualization and image-processing tools with Hollywood-style special effects to create an image comprised of a photorealistic model of the rover and a false-color mosaic. The size of the rover in the image is approximately correct and was based on the size of the rover tracks in the mosaic. The mosaic was assembled from frames taken with the panoramic camera on Sol 489(May 19, 2005).
Dan Maas created the MER model; synthetic image by Koji Kuramura, Zareh Gorjian, Mike Stetson and Eric M. De Jong. Credit: NAA / JPL-Caltech / Cornell
