"Armed with some of NASA's most sophisticated gear and the space agency's biggest use of open source software and development ever, the Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers just received clearance for an extended tour of the Red Planet.
"Jeff Norris, a senior computer scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory who headed development of the rovers' open source-heavy Science Activity Planner (SAP), said the mission extension was a steal for taxpayers, whose space and research support has shrunk along with NASA budgets..."
