Dejan varado al Spirit

NASA's Spirit rover looks as if it's stuck for good in "a golfer's worst nightmare," an inescapable sand trap, mission managers said Tuesday.

"Spirit's driving days are likely over," says NASA's Doug McCuistion of the agency's Mars Exploration Program. "But we will continue its mission."

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Spirit and Opportunity, its still-roaming twin, landed on the Red Planet in 2004. Opportunity quickly found evidence of past water on Mars, in layers of sedimentary rock lining the walls of craters. Spirit investigated the vast Gusev crater's lava plains and hills. Designed to last three months, the $820 million rovers attracted worldwide attention and have had their funding extended repeatedly.

About 10 months ago, Spirit cracked a salt sand crust on a plateau called "Home Plate" within Gusev crater, which left the rover spinning its wheels. Mission managers tried to slowly drive the rover out ever since, but with winter's onset on Mars cutting energy to the probe, they have decided to turn efforts to tilting the craft's solar panels north to gather more energy. Gusev crater sits in the planet's southern hemisphere.

The six-wheeled rover lost the use of one wheel in 2006 and another during the extrication attempt. Recent maneuvers have helped, but the craft still tilts 9 degrees south. It's possible that more maneuvers can lean the craft further northward by hiking up a rear wheel, says rover driver Ashley Stroupe of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. "We're seeing some improvement in the tilting," she says.

At the current tilt, Spirit's electronics probably will likely "hibernate" for six months without a signal over the winter, JPL project manager John Callas says. Although winter temperatures can dip to minus 49 degrees, the team expects the rover's electronics to survive.

"The temperatures will be colder than anything we've seen on the surface of Mars," Callas says. He said the craft probably will weather the season but added, "There's no guarantee."

"We have hope that Spirit will survive this cold, dark winter," says mission scientist Steve Squyres of Cornell University. Assuming it does, team scientists will take advantage of the rover's stationary position to perform radio-wave motion measurements of Martian gravity that should reveal whether the planet has a solid- or liquid-iron core, Squyres says, "a fundamental question."

El link: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/2010-01-27-rover27_ST_N.htm?csp=Tech