(From top: The mission badge of the Spirit rover, featuring Marvin the Martian; and a few pictures that were beamed back to Earth by the Spirit rover)
Spirit is dying. And, one might say, it’s about time, too. The intrepid little rover’s been exploring the Martian surface since January the 3rd, 2004. It shares the Red Planet’s surface with its twin, Opportunity; but since their landing sites were almost diametrically opposite one another, they probably don’t get into too many fights about who’s on whose side of the planet.
Spirit, which is about the size of a dune buggy, got stuck in a sand trap in May 2009, and since only four of its six wheels remained fully operational by then, it hasn’t been able to extricate itself yet. This leaves the rover in an extremely vulnerable situation, as it’s unable to orient its solar panels to take full advantage of the sun’s energy, or to allow the wind to brush dust off the panels’ surfaces. And now, with the onset of the harsh Martian winter, when even less of the sun’s energy reaches the planet’s surface, Spirit may run out of power completely.
It would be a sad end to what’s been a long and fruitful life of adventuring. Far longer than nearly anyone expected, as a matter of fact. When Spirit and Opportunity were launched, their expected lifetimes were only three months. They’ve both already outlived that estimate by a factor of around 24. They’ve survived surviving paralyzing cold, blinding dust and long periods without sun, all of which occasionally left them silent and still, but only until conditions improved and they shook off the dust, stirred to life and puttered off to do more work.
Don’t you just wish all electronic appliances were that resilient?
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