Spirit, you were a good rover. You were a great rover. You did your job, and more. There was never any doubt as to whether you’d be staying on Mars, but nearly two thousand days of operation instead of ninety? Incredible.
Spirit isn’t done yet, but unfortunately, she might be getting close… NASA has officially given up attempts to extricate the rover from deep sand and has declared her a stationary science platform. In the next few weeks, small movements will be made to try and orient Spirit’s solar panels more favorably toward the south, in the hopes that they will be able to generate enough power to keep Spirit alive through the Martian winter.
If Spirit makes it, she could continue to do valuable scientific work for months or even years:
“There’s a class of science we can do only with a stationary vehicle that we had put off during the years of driving,” said Steve Squyres, a researcher at Cornell University and principal investigator for Spirit and Opportunity. “Degraded mobility does not mean the mission ends abruptly. Instead, it lets us transition to stationary science.”
One stationary experiment Spirit has begun studies tiny wobbles in the rotation of Mars to gain insight about the planet’s core. This requires months of radio-tracking the motion of a point on the surface of Mars to calculate long-term motion with an accuracy of a few inches.
“If the final scientific feather in Spirit’s cap is determining whether the core of Mars is liquid or solid, that would be wonderful — it’s so different from the other knowledge we’ve gained from Spirit,” said Squyres.
Tools on Spirit’s robotic arm can study variations in the composition of nearby soil, which has been affected by water. Stationary science also includes watching how wind moves soil particles and monitoring the Martian atmosphere.
We’re all pulling you ya back here on Earth, Spirit.
Meanwhile, Opportunity is doing just fine, heading towards a very young crater called Concepcion at a blistering pace of about 200 feet per day. Stuck or not, these little rovers never cease to amaze me.
[ Press Release ]
Comic VIA [ xkcd ]
