Not a big deal around here, but how about on Mars?
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/opportunity/20110810a.html
All those tasty rocks..she's about to go back to work! They sure build em good in Pasadena, eh? This mission was supposed to last 90 days.
I saw a documentary on the rovers. It was amazing. The fact that they are still going strong is a testament to the efforts of the engineers and builders.
Hmmm...I wonder if the original moon buggy (buggies?) would still work. Maybe a fresh battery and hope for no meteor impacts.
I think one of the rovers went dead earlier this year (Spirit?) but the other one has done over 20 miles....
KJ
Yeah, Sprit (MER-A) died. She got stuck in some kind of soft soil, and was kind of trapped at a bad angle for the solar panels over the Martian winter. Couldn't get enough power when the days got shorter. I'll bet that if you could get to Gusev with a battery & a set of jumper cables, she'd fire right up.
It's astonishing how much autonomy this new generation of probes have to possess. It amazes me just how big the universe really is. The solar system is just our back yard, and it takes six minutes one-way for radio messages (instructions from Earth, and data from Mars) to pass. The machine has to kind of think for itself. On the surface, that's not so tough. It's programmed to stop and ask for directions. In flight, OTOH...
From the director himself, here's "Six Minutes of Terror" (2003).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZRXwRybb1I&feature=related
Also related, the next generation rover "Curiosity" (MSL) arrived at the Cape on June 23. 
Dammit now there's dust in my eye.
what is funny about those rovers.. they used outdated parts when they went up. The newer chips and motherboards were not yet "flight rated" so they were already a generation behind the common PC.
Osterkraut, that was great. Thanks, man.
When can she come home? Well..there is a precedent.
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/lunar/missions/apollo/apollo_12/experiments/surveyor/
IIRC, the Surveyor 3 camera is now in the Smithsonian.
madmachine: Bingo! Again, IIRC NASA had a program intended to test "off-the-shelf" components in robotic probes (hoping to save some $$$), but it got canceled.
