NASA’s Mars Rover Most Likely Stuck for Good
The Spirit Rover, which has been motoring all over the surface of our neighboring red planet has been stuck in loose sand since May and NASA officials are saying that it won’t be able to pull itself out.
At this point, two of the rover’s wheels are broken, making it even harder to free itself from its current predicament. NASA is attempting to tilt the rover in the direction of the weak solar rays in an effort to keep its batteries charged up enough that it can still conduct soil experiments where it is. If they are unable to accomplish this, the rover will enter a hibernation mode that it will not come out of until the end of this summer when the sun’s rays are strong enough to juice up the onboard batteries again.
Not becoming discouraged, scientists now believe that they can use the disabled rover to investigate different aspects of the planet that they hadn’t thought of before. Since the rover is now stationary, they can use its instruments to determine how much the planet wobbles. Once that data is gathered, they will be able to figure out whether the interior of the planet is liquid or solid, which will in turn allow them to better understand the planet’s magnetic history.
Even though the little rover is stuck far away from the scientists who devoted themselves to this project, there are still many things that it can reveal about Mars that we would’ve otherwise never known for sure.
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