Unfree Spirit: NASA's Mars Rover Appears Stuck for Good
Tuesday, January 26, 2010 - 19:07
in Astronomy & Space
The Mars rover Spirit, which this month passed its sixth anniversary of landing on the Red Planet, will apparently rove no more. NASA announced in a teleconference Tuesday that Spirit, stuck for months in a patch of soft soil known as Troy, has been designated a "stationary research platform". Spirit has not managed to free itself in a series of extraction maneuvers that began in November , and the rover's controllers say that their focus must now turn to preparing for the onset of winter in the Martian southern hemisphere--a harsh season, lasting nearly half an Earth year, that Spirit may not survive. [More]