How Communities Foster Innovation

February 2019 marked the end of the most successful mission in NASA history. After more than 14 years of exploring the Martian Surface, the rover named Opportunity has stopped responding. It landed on the surface in January of 2004 with the mission of discovering signs of past life on the planet. Instead of lasting the planned 90 days, It survived longer than any other unmanned surface vehicle.

The team behind Opportunity and its partner, Spirit spanned multiple generations. Those running the project at the end were just finishing High School when it was launched. There is no one person or even small team that can take sole credit for the success. Instead, there are thousands of people within a passionate and dedicated community that worked together for this accomplishment.

A Community of Innovation

Many of these same traits can be found in successful Open Source projects. Consider Linux, the Operating System running on most of the world’s servers. It was started in 1991. Since that time, many generations of Engineers have improved upon it. A number of which were not even alive when it was first released. The reason for the longevity is a strong community dedicated to achieving something greater than any member could do on his or her own.