NASA Says Spirit Isn’t Phoning Home

The Mars Exploration Rover Spirit, a mission designed to last three months but instead lasted more than six years, has not responded to NASA’s attempts to contact it for the past 10 months. The last transmission to the plucky little rover, which got mired in a sand trap on Mars but continued to send information until the onset of Martian winter last year, will be tomorrow.  NASA engineers say that the rover has endured a pretty stressful winter, what with the lack of sunlight to keep its batteries charged to run its survival heaters. Without those warmers, the internal temperatures on the rover likely got cold enough to damage or destroy critical components and connections. If that has indeed happened, then Spirit has gone to sleep and won’t be waking up again.

Spirit landed on Mars on Jan. 3, 2004. After accomplishing its prime-mission goals, the rover’s controllers programmed it to accomplish additional objectives, including further exploration of the region where it landed, and ongoing imaging of the surface and atmospheric measurements. Its twin, Opportunity, continues active exploration of Mars on the other side of the planet.

With the loss of Spirit, NASA is redeploying teams to work with the Mars rover, Curiosity, which launches in November of this year. Mars exploration goes on — building on Spirit’s successes and accomplishments. For those of us who are interested in Mars and its continued exploration, it’s a sad passing, but we know that Spirit has advanced our understanding of the planet.  If you haven’t kept up with the latest in Mars exploration, check it out at NASA’s MER pages.