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Houston, Mars Rover in Trouble! |
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Wednesday, 06 January 2010 |
One of the US’ Mars Exploration Rovers is literally in a quagmire, scheduled for an eventual demise when it loses power. But it’s going down fighting, flashing a big middle finger to the robotic equivalent of death. Five Mars rovers have been sent to… Mars. While the two launched by the Soviets (Mars 2 and 3) crashed, the next three launched by the US decades later all landed and explored the surface of the red planet successfully.
The first, the Mars Pathfinder, stopped reporting back to earth nearly three months after its July 4, 1997 landing. The newer duet of Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) however, after their January 2004 touchdowns, continue exploring the Martian landscape as I write this.
These two MERs, named the Spirit (MER-A) and Opportunity (MER-B) respectively, are pretty impressive for exploration robots designed with a three-month mission timeline in mind. Unfortunately, the former accidentally got stuck in sand last April, “at one edge of the Troy crater, west of the Home Plate plateau, in the Martian southern hemisphere.”
The last attempt to free Spirit was last November, and it made things worse; the right rear wheel of the six-wheeled robotic explorer broke down, adding to MER-A’s troubles. Back in 2006, the right front wheel failed, apparently due to an electric motor burning out.
Spirit needs to move, not only shake off dust that has settled and covered the rover’s life-giving solar panels. Come May this year, the Martian “winter” will hit Troy crater, cutting off the sun and effectively depriving the rover of its only source of power.
Still, whether Spirit finally meets its demise mid-2010, such mechanical hardiness is to be admired. Check out some of the photos taken by MER-A (posted all over this post) and you’ll see what I mean.
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