One of NASA’s two robotic Mars rovers, Spirit, is dead. On May 17th of this year, NASA announced that it would give up on trying to get back in touch with Spirit. It has been stuck in a sand trap for two years and fell silent last winter. The managers of Spirit decided that it was not worth the time and money to continue the mission with it. The last set of commands was sent to Spirit on May 25th.
Space expeditions in the United States began during a cold war against Russia. Ever since, the U.S. has been launching many satellites, humans, and robots into space primarily as part of an arms race. Technology has improved so much as to send robotic rovers out to space to explore the outside world.
The Spirit was one of two rovers of NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Mission, which is still ongoing as a single-rover operation focused on Spirit’s twin, Opportunity. Spirit’s mission began successfully on January 4, 2004 and lasted twenty times longer than its originally planned 90-sol mission. A sol is the term used to refer to the duration of a solar day on Mars, which is 24 hours, 39 minutes, and 35.244 seconds long. As winter came, Spirit’s solar panels began to lose the ability to generate enough electricity. Engineers hoped to hear from Spirit when spring returned, but March 22, 2010 was when they had their last communication with the rover.
Just three weeks after landing, Spirit had a computer memory glitch. In 2006, its right front wheel failed. A second wheel failed only three years after the front wheel. As of the failures of the two wheels, Spirit moved backwards, dragging its broken wheels through the soil of Mars. This malfunction actually revealed information from below the soil surface that would not have been revealed if the wheels did not uncover them. One of the discoveries was a material called amorphous silica, which is believed to have formed in an ancient hydrothermal system.
Spirit and Opportunity made important discoveries on the Mars Exploration Rover Mission. Both helped scientists learn that Mars, which is now a cold and dry planet, once carried abundant amounts of water at its surface.
Last year, NASA announced that Spirit would continue to help scientists by observing the atmosphere and rotation of Mars as a stationary science station. Opportunity is continuing operations by driving to a crater called Endeavour, where minerals left behind from clay could provide hints about the history of Mars to scientists.
SOURCES
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