RSS Feed | 
Twitter | Advertising | Archives | Support"After six years of unprecedented exploration of the Red Planet, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit no longer will be a fully mobile robot."
Marc's note: After all these years Spirit keeps on giving. Good news in an otherwise difficult time for NASA.
Print this article
replied to comment from Zvezdichko
| January 26, 2010 5:28 PM
| Reply
Er... No! Try this as a starter:
http://marsrover.nasa.gov/spotlight/20090914a.html (September 14, 2009) My guess as to the thinking: let's see if another gust can clear the panels giving us more power to play with. Meanwhile we model the 'heck' out of the problem.
However, if you had been following the story, we had this:
http://marsrover.nasa.gov/spotlight/20091030a.html
and this:
http://marsrover.nasa.gov/spotlight/20091123a.html
Its called the incident pit and the trick is to NOT keep digging! I would suggest if they had gone gung-ho into the problem and arrived in pretty much the same position, the approbation from certain quarters would have been even more vociferous! Barring a miracle it's time to make the best of a bad job. So rather than criticism its Kudos! to the team for making the tough decision to set her up as a ground station and do even more science. 90 days people. *90* days...
If I was Mars First kinda guy I would be touting a manned rescue mission! But that is a task for future generations and future generations of 'Bots.
Time for a Spirit II: On da Moom!
2 Comments
It's time for some justified criticism.
Spirit has been stuck in the soil for about ten months (according to NASA). The managers spent two months trying to get the rover out. When Spirit finally made some little progress by driving backwards then... sorry, too late.
Why did they spend so much time planning and doing tests on Earth instead of actually trying to get the rover out?