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15 July 2010
Wind Gust Gives Opportunity Rover a Power Boost
Either some little Martians came by and gave the Opportunity rover a quick once-over cleaning, or a recent gust of wind blew layers of dust off her solar panels. The image above (supplied by our favorite photo- whiz Stu Atkinson), shows Oppy's solar panels on sol 2274 and 2299 (approximately June 18 and July 12 [...]
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03 June 2010
Spirit Rover Still Providing New Evidence for Past Water on Mars
Even though the Mars Rover Spirit is asleep, a new look at old data from one of her instruments confirms the presence of large amounts of carbonate-rich rocks, which means that regions of the planet may have once harbored water. The Miniature Thermal Emission Spectrometer, or Mini-TES, instrument on the rover looked at an outcrop [...]
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08 April 2010
HiRISE Captures Amazing Close-Up of Spirit Rover
The HiRISE team released some new images on Wednesday — one of which was another incredible avalanche image. But then there was another shot of Gusev Crater, the home of the Spirit rover. It was a wide shot of the entire region (you can see it below), and visible are the Columbia Hills, [...]
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06 February 2010
Movies of Spirit's Last Moves Before Winter
Even though the Spirit rover is stuck in a Martian sandtrap, the rover drivers were actually able to move her quite a bit, and therefore improving her chances of surviving the winter. This video shows recent drives by the Spirit rover from Jan. 14 to Feb. 4, 2010 (Sols 2145 to 2165), where the [...]
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29 January 2010
Can an Immobile Spirit Rover Survive the Martian Winter?
Mission managers for the Mars Exploration Rover program announced this week that the Spirit rover will likely never rove again on Mars. But that doesn't mean her life is over. However, with the rover virtually immobile and stuck in a sand trap, she currently is in a very vulnerable and potentially "deadly" situation [...]
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26 January 2010
No More Roving for Spirit
The Spirit rover's driving days are likely over, as efforts to extricate the rover have been curtailed. "We do not believe that Spirit is extractable," said Doug McCuistion, director of NASA's Mars Exploration Program. But mission managers stressed that today is not a day of loss at this point, as they hope to [...]
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31 December 2009
Will the Spirit Rover Survive 2010?
In just a few days, the Spirit rover will celebrate six incredible years on Mars. But JPL put out a press release today, as well as the video above, saying the outlook for Spirit's survival is not good. Being stuck in a sand trap with wheels that aren't working well are [...]
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15 December 2009
Old Gimpy Wheel on Spirit Rover Shows Signs of Life
Could it be true that the old gimpy wheel on the Spirit rover is making a comeback? The right-front wheel, which stopped operating way back on Sol 779 (March 13, 2006), surprised engineers by indicating normal resistance and turning slightly during a resistance test for that wheel. Spirit, which has been stuck [...]
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19 November 2009
Spirit Rover Makes Progress
A little good news for Spirit! The rover successfully moved; not very much, but its the first step of a planned two-step motion to try and get Spirit free from a sand trap on Mars. On on Sol 2090 (Nov. 19), the rover spun its wheels for the equivalent of 2.5 meters (8.2 [...]
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17 November 2009
Spirit Extrication, Day 1: Drive Stopped After 1 Second
Mission managers sent the drive commands to the Spirit rover at 4 a.m. EST (0900 GMT) today, — Nov. 17, 2009 and Sol 2088 for the rover — but the data back from the rover indicates the rover stopped less than one second after it began moving its wheels when the rover automatically sensed more [...]
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13 November 2009
Ok, Spirit Rover, Let's Blow This Pop Stand!
On Monday, Nov. 16, NASA will begin transmitting commands to the Spirit rover on Mars to begin the extrication process to free the rover from where she has been stuck since April 23rd of this year. While members of the rover team have not given up on getting the rover to rove again, they [...]
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09 November 2009
Stuck Spirit Rover Moves!
The Spirit Rover, which has had its wheels stuck for 145 Martian sols, has finally moved! Though she's far from being extricated from her current position, this is the first time that she's budged in quite a while. The Mars rover driving team is working on ways to get Sprit out, and this recent move [...]
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19 October 2009
MER Team Prepares to Extract Spirit
To prepare for an actual attempt to extract the Spirit rover from its sand-trapped predicament, engineers using test rovers on Earth have added a new challenge. Until last week, those commanding and assessing drives by the test rovers were usually in the same room as the sandbox setup simulating Spirit's predicament, where they can [...]
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14 July 2009
Spirit's Psychedelic Visions
The Spirit rover has had memory problems, arthritic-like symptoms in her wheels, as well as her current dilemma of being stuck in loose Martian soil. But now, is she having psychedelic visions, too?! No, not to worry; she's not having hallucinations or smoking any mind-altering Martian weed. This image is just [...]
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02 July 2009
Test-Bed Rover is Now Stuck — Which is a Good Thing!
Engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory have intentionally driven their engineering rover into soft soil in a sandbox testbed, to simulate how the Spirit rover is stuck on Mars. And they did a good job of it, too, as the test rover, called SSTB1, is stuck, too, with its wheels spinning and going nowhere. [...]
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