http://212.58.226.75/2/hi/science/nature/8481798.stm

Quote :

"The US space agency (Nasa) has conceded defeat in its battle to free the Spirit rover from its Martian sand trap. The vehicle became stuck in soft soil back in May last year and all the efforts to extricate it have failed. Nasa says Spirit, which landed on the Red Planet just over six years ago, will now live out its remaining days as a static science station. The robot geologist has taken thousands of images and found evidence in Mars' rocks of a wetter, warmer past. "Spirit has encountered a golfer's worst nightmare - the sand trap that no matter how many strokes you take, you can't get out of it," said Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars exploration programme at Nasa headquarters in Washington DC. "But this is not a day to mourn Spirit; this is not a day of loss at this point. Spirit will continue to make contributions to science." The robot's predicament has been exacerbated by the failure of two of its six wheels. Without the additional traction, the agency now accepts that further efforts to try to escape the soft soil will be fruitless. Instead, the mission team is concentrating on trying to get the rover tilted in a manner that will maximise the amount of sunlight falling on its solar panels during the approaching winter months. Engineers have a plan to rock the vehicle back and forth to acquire a more favourable posture. Even so, it is likely Spirit will maintain so little energy in its batteries that it will go into hibernation, perhaps as soon as April. It will not emerge from that state until August or September, when the Sun gets high enough in the Martian sky to power up the rover's systems. "The rover will be like a polar bear, hibernating; and it could be for many months - of the order of six months," explained John Callas, Spirit's project manager at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "We have to be prepared to go through a period where we are not hearing from the rover for an extended length of time.""

Goodnight, Sweet Prince.

1/27/2010 12:51:48 PM

millions of dollars

the best minds

and pwnt by sand

1/27/2010 12:52:57 PM

^lol


when are they going to learn that these little shits need some rockets on them

1/27/2010 12:53:46 PM

Poor little guy. They said he wouldn't make it past 90 days. "I'll show them!" He made it to 91. Then 92. And he kept going and going. He got stuck, but he never gave up. "I'll push and I'll push!" So he pushed and he pushed, until he couldn't push any more.

"Don't fret, scientists. My wheels are broke, and I can't move, but I'll keep looking around for you. First, I just need to take a little nap..."

Keep pushing, little rover. Keep pushing.

1/27/2010 12:58:24 PM

^^^Um...sure, after it lasted far longer than it was designed to, or planned to.

This is definitely an example of overachieving, not the opposite!

1/27/2010 1:01:47 PM

i appreciate that

but still

pwnt by sand on a sand-covered planet

1/27/2010 1:03:05 PM

Amazing that little fucker lasted some 2100+ days

1/27/2010 1:03:05 PM

1/27/2010 1:03:27 PM

Spirit was awesome. I love you NASA.

1/27/2010 1:07:04 PM

if it was me i'd equip these things with an low density gas inflatable balloon which they could inflate to go up and then away from this situation

1/27/2010 1:21:48 PM

i'd send superman to save it

1/27/2010 1:22:48 PM

Mars' atmosphere is like 1% of the density of Earth's. That'd be a big balloon.

1/27/2010 1:41:01 PM

backup mode:

1/27/2010 1:52:00 PM

^The cost to find a solar generator for that, and to put it into orbit, would be astronomical.

1/27/2010 1:55:13 PM

Quote :

"Keep pushing, little rover. Keep pushing."

ahahaha, reminded me of:

1/27/2010 1:57:59 PM

oh yeah

how about nuclear power? feasible?

1/27/2010 2:00:12 PM

Yep. Carl Sagan proposed it, actually, before his untimely death.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)

[Edited on January 27, 2010 at 2:06 PM. Reason : ]

1/27/2010 2:06:15 PM

The terrorists have won, imo

1/27/2010 4:55:40 PM

^^This would have enabled time travel to the future, right?

Like you could travel with nuclear propulsion for 20 years, but in Earth time something like hundreds of years would pass. So you could age 20 years, and when you returned it would be like year 2500 or something.

That would be cool, until you landed in the middle of a nuclear winter with no one around.

1/27/2010 5:10:03 PM

i thought this was about crop breeding software

1/27/2010 5:16:05 PM

Nooooo!

1/27/2010 6:42:14 PM

Quote :

"backup mode: "

In sand that loose? I definitely see 4 localized bearing capacity failures in this picture alone.

The thing needed rubber tracks instead of wheels.

1/27/2010 6:48:09 PM

On January 26th, 2213 days into its mission, NASA declared Spirit a 'stationary research station', expected to operate several more months until the dust buildup on its solar panels forces a final shutdown.

[Edited on January 29, 2010 at 8:02 AM. Reason : ]

1/29/2010 8:00:49 AM

^

In a hundred years when we have people there we will get the trooper!

1/29/2010 8:07:19 AM

Hey hey hey. It's not dead! It's mission has just been reclassified. It's a fixed scientific platform now. No worries, after the Martian winter it'll be back up and kicking ass.

1/29/2010 8:28:03 AM