NASA Abandons Escape Attempts for Stuck Mars Rover

The roving days for stuck Mars rover Spirit are over after more than six years rolling across the Martian surface, NASA announced Tuesday

source article
www.space.com...

Well it lasted way longer than expected, but I guess all good things come to an end.

It will still be used as a weather station, and I guess that's good. I do wonder how much it will cost to use it as such though. I wonder if it would be better to turn it off all together and use the money that would be spent on another project. I assume they will get rid of most of the team, but I'm sure something like this still costs a lot of cash heash even if it's just sitting there.

*sniff*
g'bye rover. When winter rolls around that will undoubtedly be the end. If it lasts that long.

I wonder what the mood at JPL is.

[edit on 1/26/2010 by Phage]

reply to post by Phage


Try to be a bit more optimistic
"Spirit may be able to survive the cold winter and hibernate until sunlight levels increase in the spring, mission managers said. "

*Sniff* I have loved some of the stuff beamed back from this little blighter.
Lets hope the solar array doesn't let him down......

Hi, rover fans.

Here it is from the REAL source:
marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov...

Blue skies.

If you listen carefully, you can hear the steady drum of little fingers on a keyboard...

"Mars Rover Destroyed by Aliens! NASA & TPTB Cover-UP?"

It makes sense really they cant get a budget for another robot mission while this one is still ongoing. I hope we can recover it one day and put it in the space museum.

Originally posted by carslake

It makes sense really they cant get a budget for another robot mission while this one is still ongoing. I hope we can recover it one day and put it in the space museum.

That is if its on Mars, From the rover images all these seem as if
they were taken right here on terra, btw speaking of which.

There is an area which has the same martian landspace.


As for the red background, i believe that was because of the rover controllers
someone or some have set the cams to record and take everything in red colour to make it look as if Mars has a red skybox.

Way to go little rover dude! (they did tell you it was only 90 days work right? )

I did ya a little photoshop little buddy, Always get stuck in a no parking zone, murpheys law.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/09e81de7a275.jpg[/atsimg]

Hope you get enough sunshine to see you through the winter!

[edit on 26/1/2010 by Now_Then]

Thats it! I'm not parking anywhere near Mars... ..again.

It will make an excellent coffee table for my house on Mars.

It needs the "John Lear Paper Towels and Windex" treatment from our Gary McKinnon's Secret Space Astronauts.

I'm not taking the pi** here, they are spot on with a lot of other things if you do the research (I've done 10 years full time now into the subject).

Originally posted by fieryjaguarpaw
It will still be used as a weather station, and I guess that's good.

Monitoring the atmosphere is just one of the things Spirit will be doing. They also plan to use the rover to help determine if Mars has a solid or a liquid core. They can do this by tracking the rovers position by radio with the accuracy of a few inches over a minimum of six months or so. They can then look at the wobble of Mars to determine the type of core it may have.

From what I've read, it seems like they have all sorts of stationary science planned.

I do wonder how much it will cost to use it as such though. I wonder if it would be better to turn it off all together and use the money that would be spent on another project.

Spirit is still perfectly capable of acquiring data. This makes it worth more than any project still on paper. The money spent over the past 5 years on the extended missions for both the rovers is far less than the average cost of a single new mission. Might as well get your money's worth and use it till it's really dead.