 NASA | |
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Nine months after the Spirit rover sank into a Martian sand trap, NASA says the troubled traveler will have to remain stationary in order to survive the Red Planet’s winter. Now the challenge is to improve Spirit’s tilt so that it soaks up as much solar energy as it can.
Doug McCuistion, director of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program, said Spirit ran up against “a golfer’s worst nightmare: the sand trap that no matter how many strokes you take you can’t get out of it.”
The rover team has been trying to free Spirit for months, but McCuistion declared that the golf cart-sized robot’s “driving days are likely over.”
“Right now our plan is to worry about getting through the winter,” he told journalists today during a teleconference. …(read more)