Wishlist for next Martian rover:
1. Windscreen wipers on solar panels
NASA’s exploration rover Opportunity entered its historic ninth year of service on Mars today, having already driven over 21 miles and helped boffins make groundbreaking scientific discoveries on the unforgiving world. The roving robot touched down in Eagle Crater on the Red Planet on 25 January 2004, three weeks after its …
"its historic ninth year of service on Mars "
"its fifth Martian winter"
So surely that's about 5 or 6 years then?
Or should the first line be "ninth earth-year"?
If only we had units of time that weren't based on a dynamic speed (even Earth's rotation around the Sun is slowing down)
Not so much. More is was merely a failure to check which standards were in use by what teams, and making sure conversions between teams were accurate. Metric, Imperial, and even El Reg units would all work quite well together, so long as you know who's using what, and convert correctly.
Meanwhile, those projects where NASA hits one 'out of the park' surely do go a long way towards making up for the bunts and foul balls that are their less-successful projects.
I would get a ZERO for any answer in any Engineering exam that wasn't in SI units (and only powers of 1000 of those, so no cm thanks). You don't get to pick and choose. Whoever chose Imperial, contracted with anyone using Imperial or knew that someone on the project was using imperial and didn't hit the breaks should be fired, probably retroactively.