How long will it take the rovers to observe the certain areas on Mars?
The two rovers will be sent to Gusev crater and Meridiani (the “hematite” site). It is not yet decided which rover will go to which area. When they arrive, each rover will take observations of the area for at least 90 days. It is quite possible that they will go even longer than projected, as the Mars Sojourner rover did (it was projected to go for a week and lasted about 2 months). The seasonal changes on Mars are such that the temperature and availability of sunlight will be reduced significantly as the mission progress, and so a duration of as long as 180 days is probably the most that the rovers could possibly last, and even then toward the end the available sunlight power will be so low that operations will be minimal.
