Mars Rover Down? Spirit Stays Silent

astroengine writes "One year after NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit stopped communicating with Earth, mission managers have announced that they will give the stranded rover one more month to send a signal before they scale back the search. But things aren't looking good. In the words of JPL-based Mars rover driver Scott Maxwell, 'Spirit was so close to us, just a year ago. Snap your fingers, and she's a hundred million miles distant and we can't even prove she's alive.'"

Comments

Re:Why wait a month or year?

[Kjella]

The most probable explaination is that Spirit died last Martian winter. The hope was that it was still alive but in deep hibernation mode and would eventually get enough power surplus to charge its batteries and reconnect with Earth. Now we're at peak power generation but Mars is still heating up a bit - just like in the northern hemisphere the summer solistice is in june but july/august are the warmest months. Normally it should have reconnected long before that, but if say the solar panels were partially damaged it could take this long for it to gather enough power. It's been a slim hope and it's getting even slimmer, pretty soon it's time to write off that possibility completely.

Re:Um, someone disagrees...

[khallow]

Five years delayed.

Re:A pity it had to be Spirit , not Opportunity

[SharpFang]

We pity malfunctioning Spirit, pity it's not Opportunity. NO.

Goddamnit, Spirit was a row of failures from day one, an epic struggle but a struggle nevertheless.

Meanwhile, Opportunity analyzed some nearby craters, climbed a hill, found one HUGE crater and began moving there.

It will reach it around 2015.

Yep, NASA made plans of some decade long trip for it, a couple years ago. Not "will it respond in next month?" style hope, but "Will it last 10 years more?" hope. Totally awesome and incredible.

Damn you, nothing Spirit was close to compares to the crater Opportunity tries to reach.