NASA Places the Mars Rover Spirit on the Inactive List

After a year of no response to NASA queries, the Spirit Rover has been designated inactive and NASA will cease trying to signal the rover.


From the Gizmodo article:

• Spirit has been incommunicado for more than a year despite daily calls by NASA. The cause of Spirit's silence ... is (very) likely the bitter Martian winter (which most likely) damaged its electronics, preventing the .... rover from waking up.

Spirit became immobile January 26th, 2213 days into its mission but continued to operate as a stationary platform for months afterwards until it finally succumbed to the cold and dust.

Wiki on Spirit Rover

Complete Gizmodo article

cartoon by Nitesh

NASA Rover Spirit Hopelessly Stuck

On May 1, 2009 NASA's Martian rover Spirit became bogged down in loose sand that NASA now admits it will not be able to free itself from. After researching methods that might free the rover and trying many different maneuvers, as of January 26th 2010 NASA said that none of the maneuvers proved effective, thus dooming the rover to remain in place. However controlers feel that there are many experiments that the rover is still capable of performing so will continue to operate the craft until such times are the solar cells can no longer charge the system's batteries.

The twin rover missions were to last only 90 days. As of NASA deeming the Spirit rover as no longer a mobile platform, mission elapse time stands at 6 years and 22 days since landing or 24.6 times the planned mission duration.


Gizmodo article

Mars Rovers Will Not Be Shut Down

It had been reported earlier that in order to make a 4 million dollar budget cut mandated by the US government, NASA was preparing to terminate monitoring of the Mars rover Spirit, in effect, turning it off. In a recent reversal NASA has announced that the Mars rover Spirit will not be shut down. NASA is saying that it has rescinded a letter that recommended budget cuts in the Mars Rover program to cover the cost of a next-generation rover on the Red Planet.

Life on Mars? Amazing photos from Nasa probe reveal mystery figure on Red Planet

I thought someone was hoaxing me but Shaun came up with another post from Daily Mail online

It seems that the Martian rover Spirit caught a rather unusual formation in one of the photos that it sent back to Earth. Initial inspections revealed nothing unusual, but closer examination by amateur astronomers has thrown up this intriguing picture. Yes, this one does the infamous Mars Face one way better. The picture as you can see seems to depict a humanoid outline that appears to be point at something out of frame. Of course it should be pointed out that without reference points, it is impossible to scale the figure. Another site listing the graphic has the size of the "man" at around four inches or slightly over 10 cm. And I thought Martians would be tall and thin!

Thanks to Shaun A. Saunders for the post

Mars rover finds signs of microbial life

Shaun Saunders send in this article from the UK Telegraph:

Nasa says its Mars rover Spirit has discovered "the best evidence yet" of a past habitable environment on the planet's surface. Spirit has been exploring a plateau called Home Plate, where it discovered silica-rich soil in May. Researchers are now trying to determine what produced the patch of nearly pure silica - the main ingredient of window glass. They believe the deposits came from an ancient hot-spring environment or an environment called a fumarole, in which acidic steam rises through cracks. On Earth, both of these types of settings teem with microbial life. Whichever of those conditions produced it, this concentration of silica is probably the most significant discovery by Spirit for revealing a habitable niche that existed on Mars in the past.

click for complete article