Spirit Still Stuck, But JPL Keeps Trying

NASA’s Mars Rover, Spirit, is still stuck on Mars after two weeks of attempts by experts at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to get it moving. In an interview on NPR, John Callas, project manager for the Mars rovers, explained the difficulty in extricating Spirit from the “slippery, sandy stuff” in which it has been stuck for the past six months. One of Spirit’s six wheels stopped functioning about three years ago, but that one is not the problem now. The rover broke through a crusty surface into loose material below and the five functioning wheels cannot get enough traction to move. Callas said that the rover still could do a lot of science from a stationary position, although JPL is a bit worried about the oncoming winter and whether sufficient sunlight will reach the rover’s solar panels to keep it alive. The rover is tilted southward now, and the Sun will be in the northern sky during the winter, which arrives in May on that part of Mars.