NASA Mars Rover Spirit May Move Forward By Spinning Its Wheels

coondoggie writes "As NASA celebrates its Mars rover Spirit's sixth anniversary exploring the red planet, it is hunting for a way to keep the machine, which is mired in a sand trap, alive to see a seventh year. On its Web site, the space agency this week noted there may indeed be such an option. That option would be spinning the wheels on the north side of Spirit, letting it dig in deeper in the Martian sand but at the same time improving the tilt of the rover's solar panels toward the Sun."

Comments

Design

[ChrisMaple]

This should be a lesson on how not to design a Rover. Getting out of a sand trap isn't hard if you think about it beforehand and plan accordingly. We knew Mars was sandy before we sent them there. Some sort of jacking mechanism that moves the wheels out of the holes they're in, or wheels on articulated arms that can be moved one at a time out of holes. Even bigger wheels would have made getting trapped in the first place less likely.