"We've joked in the past about these rovers being past warranty," said Mark Adler, rover mission manager, during a press briefing at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. "They could operate for several more months or they could fail tomorrow, but we're going to try and keep them going."
The wheels for Spirit and its robotic twin Opportunity, currently exploring the insides of Endurance Crater at Meridiani Planum, were designed and tested for distances up to more than mile (two kilometers), Adler said. To date, Spirit has traveled about two miles (3.2 kilometers) on Mars.
Both rovers are designed to be able to operate with at least five wheels, a measure that ensures the robot's ability to roll with one wheel off the ground or snagged on a rock due to changes in terrain. The rovers should even be able to navigate flat terrain with as few as three wheels working, Adler said.
Spirit did lose a day of science due to cold temperatures on Mars last week, which prevented the rover's antenna from picking up its daily instructions, but the stall was not due to the rover's age.
Both Spirit and Opportunity have outlived their original three-month missions, giving mission scientists a bonus round of exploration.
Rocky pots and loafs
Spirit's first targets at the Columbia Hills is a rock called Pot of Gold, a target covered in round nodules that appear to have been etched from the rock in the past.
"That's the prize at the end of our rainbow," said Larry Soderblom, a rover science team member with the United States Geological Survey in Flagstaff, Arizona. "They're very well organized and it's hard to believe this is a random formation."
Spirit's cameras have also found a field of rocks, dubbed Rotting Rocks, which appears to be going through some form of decay and may hint toward past watery processes around the hills.
"It's kind of difficult to imagine here that somehow water wasn't involved," Soderblom said.
Ins and outs at Endurance Crater
At Meridiani Planum, the Opportunity rover has rolled more than 16 feet (five meters) into Endurance Crater and drilled into a rock dubbed "Tennessee" with its rock abrasion tool.
The rover took a few days to roll toward "Tennessee", moving first into and out of Endurance to prove it could exit the crater if needed. So far, its cameras have recorded a significant amount of layering throughout the crater, giving researchers hope for additional clues into the red planet's watery past.
"There's a very good chance we're going to get more insight into the history of water on Mars," said Scott McLennan, a science team member with the State University of New York in Stonybrook, New York. "You can see this exquisite layering in the crater."
Opportunity's human handlers are working to find a way to get to the rover's next science target, a region dubbed "Contact."
"At the moment we think we can get down to this Contact," McLennan said. "After that, we'll have to look and see whether we can go any further."
advertisement
