News about Spirit and Opportunity on Mars...

[Rick]

NASA's interplanetary robot rover "Opportunity", prowling the haematite steppes of the Meridiani Planum on Mars, has crept up on and photographed a mysterious space boulder or "cobble". Astro boffins theorise that the object may be alien in origin, rather than from the red planet.

More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/03/nasa_mars_rover_asteroid_hunt/

[Rick]

An unusual object recently found on Mars by a NASA robot - said to be "the size of a large watermelon" and to weigh a "half ton or more" - is thought by boffins to provide proof that the Red Planet once had a much denser atmosphere than it does now.

More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/11/block_island_in_close/

[mickw]

Efforts to free the stuck Spirit rover on Mars have been dragging on since May and today a NASA official said the robot may never get free.

"We are proceeding very cautiously and exploring all reasonable options," said John Callas, NASA project manager for Spirit and its twin, Opportunity. "There is a very real possibility that Spirit may not be able to get out, and we want to give Spirit the very best chance."

Callas and colleagues at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory have been testing ideas on a twin of Spirit at the California facility, in a pit designed to simulate the surface of Mars. It's tricky though, because of the difference in gravity of the two planets. The rover team is also refining a detailed computer model of rover mobility, calibrated with results from testing and measurements from Mars.

Mopre:   http://www.space.com/news/090914-spirit-stuck.html

Bummer 

[mickw]

NASA's intrepid Mars rover Opportunity has found yet another meteorite on the surface of the red planet.

Opportunity stumbled upon this new meteorite, dubbed "Shelter Island," less than three weeks after driving away from a larger meteorite that the rover examined for six weeks.

The rover began its approach to the meteorite with a 92-foot (28-meter) backwards drive on Oct. 1, the rover's 2,022nd day on Mars.

Opportunity and its twin rover Spirit — which is currently embedded in a soft spot of soil called Troy — have been on the Martian surface for more than five years.

Shelter Island is a pitted rock is about 18.5 inches (47 cm) long. The meteorite was first detected in images taken two Martian days earlier. (A Martian day is 24 hours and 40 minutes long.)

More:   http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/091012-opportunity-meteorite.html

[Rick]

NASA has come up with a plan to extricate their stuck rover Spirit that's been bogged down in a Martian sand trap since April.

Space agency brains have been conducting a lengthy series of trials using a test rover and sandbox on Earth to figure out the best way of freeing the hindered droid.

More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/13/nasa_spirit_rover_rescue_plan/

[mickw]

NASA engineers are set to take a second go at extricating the stuck rover Spirit from its sandy trap on Mars.

New commands for the rover to attempt to drive out of the sand it is stuck in will be sent up early in the morning on Thursday, according to a NASA report releasted late Wednesday.

Spirit has been mired in the sand pit, dubbed "Troy," since April.

The first attempt to free Spirit, which took place on Tuesday, hit a snag when the rover sensed it was tilting too much and stopped after less than one second of wheel spin.

More:   http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/091118-mars-spirit-rover-take2.html

[Rick]

NASA's Spirit Mars rover could be facing the prospect of freezing to death after attempts to free it from a sand trap suggest it may now have two disabled wheels.

Spirit got bogged down back in April, and its three left wheels are almost completely buried. Its right-front wheel clapped out in 2006, and the right-rear wheel is also showing signs of failure.

More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/09/spirit_rover/

[mickw]

The long-crippled right-front wheel of NASA's beleaguered Mars rover Spirit surprised mission managers by spinning for the first time in three years last week.

NASA engineers decided to try switching on the bum wheel to see if they could gain more traction to try to extricate the rover from the sand trap it has been stuck in since May 6.

Engineers were "totally" surprised that the wheel actually showed signs of activity last week after being switched on for the first time since 2006, when its failure due to an open circuit was thought to be permanent, said Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis. Arvidson is deputy principal investigator for the science payloads on Spirit and its twin rover, Opportunity. That wheel failure forced engineers to drive the spacecraft backwards with the crippled wheel in tow.

"We've been dragging it around Mars for three years," Arvidson said.


More on Space.com

[mickw]

Six years ago, NASA's Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity touched down on the red planet with a team of scientists eagerly looking ahead to their short, three-month missions.

As they embark on their seventh year on Mars, the longevity of the plucky rovers continues to amaze their minders back on Earth, even with Spirit potentially permanently stuck wheel-deep in Martian sand.

Spirit set down at Gusev Crater on Jan. 3, 2004, at 11:35 p.m. EST, with its younger sister rover Opportunity landing on the other side of the planet — on the plains of Meridiani Planum — more than two weeks later at midnight EST on Jan. 25. While Sunday marks the mission's sixth anniversary on Earth, it has only been 3.2 Martian years since one year on Mars is about 687 Earth days long.

More:   http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/100102-mars-rovers-year-seven.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+spaceheadlines+(SPACE.com+Headline+Feed)

[mickw]

The roving days are over for NASA's Mars rover Spirit after more than six years rolling across the Martian surface, the space agency announced Tuesday.

NASA engineers have decided to abandon efforts to rescue the Spirit rover from the deep Martian sand that snared it in May 2009. Instead, they are trying to prepare the rover to survive the harsh winter ahead in Mars' southern hemisphere. If the rover survives, it will serve as a fixed science outpost, mission managers said.

"This is not a day to mourn Spirit. This is not a day of loss," said Doug McCuistion, director of NASA's Mars exploration program, in a teleconference. "Its driving days are likely over, however its contribution will continue."

More:   Space.com

[Mike]

They should get Opportunity to trundle over to Spirit and winch it out.

[Rick]

NASA's Spirit rover should be able to wriggle free of its sandy trap on Mars after all, says a scientist for the mission. But the plucky robotic explorer will need to survive the bitter Martian winter first.

In April 2009, Spirit's wheels broke through a thin surface crust and got mired in the loose sand below. After months of trying unsuccessfully to free the rover, NASA declared on 26 January that Spirit would henceforth be a stationary lander mission rather than a rover.

More: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18596-mars-rover-spirit-could-rise-again.html

[mickw]

NASA's Mars rover Opportunity has found a Martian rock covered in weird material as its odometer hit a major milestone this week, with the long-lived robot completing equivalent to a half–marathon on the red planet.

Opportunity, now in its seventh year on Mars, found the odd Mars rock during the past six weeks studying investigating a crater called "Concepción." The crater is about 33 feet (10 meters) in diameter, with dark rays extending from it, as seen from orbit, which made it a target of interest for rover inspection because they suggest the crater is young.

The rover made the pit stop to investigate the crater on its long journey to the large crater Endeavour, which is still about 7 miles (12 km) away. It was while Opportunity was at Concepción that the rover surpassed 12.43 miles (20 km) of total driving, about the length of a half-marathon.

More:   Space.com

[Rick]

PASADENA, Calif. -- The ground where NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit became stuck last year holds evidence that water, perhaps as snow melt, trickled into the subsurface fairly recently and on a continuing basis.

Stratified soil layers with different compositions close to the surface led the rover science team to propose that thin films of water may have entered the ground from frost or snow. The seepage could have happened during cyclical climate changes in periods when Mars tilted farther on its axis. The water may have moved down into the sand, carrying soluble minerals deeper than less soluble ones. Spin-axis tilt varies over timescales of hundreds of thousands of years.

The relatively insoluble minerals near the surface include what is thought to be hematite, silica and gypsum. Ferric sulfates, which are more soluble, appear to have been dissolved and carried down by water. None of these minerals are exposed at the surface, which is covered by wind-blown sand and dust.

More: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mer/news/mer20101028.html

[mickw]

Opportunity reaches southeastern rim of Santa Maria crater

Opportunity is positioning herself for solar conjunction at the southeastern rim of the 80-meter (262-foot) diameter Santa Maria crater.
No communication has been received from Spirit since Sol 2210 (March 22, 2010).
The solar conjunction period (late-January to mid-February) will afford the rover the chance to conduct a long (multi-week) integration on a surface target with the mössbauer (MB) spectrometer. Solar conjunction is the period when communications between Earth and Mars are disrupted because the Sun is directly in between the two planets. Seen from orbit, the southeast region of the rim of Santa Maria shows evidence for hydrated sulfate minerals. On Sol 2471 (Jan. 5, 2011), a planned drive did not occur because the rover detected an error in the drive sequence sent from Earth. This was corrected and Opportunity drove on Sol 2474 (Jan. 8, 2011), covering over 78 meters (256 feet) around the southern edge of Santa Maria. On Sol 2476 (Jan. 10, 2011), the rover performed a 15-meter (49-foot) approach to the planned spot for solar conjunction. On the next sol, Opportunity bumped about 3 meters (10 feet) to the final target location.

More:   Opportunity