For Stuck Mars Rover, Time is Running Out

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A photo of NASA’s Spirit mechanical arm and the rovers surroundings during its mission.
NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit recorded this forward view of its arm and surroundings during the rover's 2,052nd Martian day, or sol (Oct. 11, 2009). (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Timeis running out for NASA?s stuck Mars rover Spirit as engineers prepare to maketheir final attempts to rescue the hard-luck robot from its Martian sand trap.

Spiritspun its wheels extremely slowly Tuesday in yet another attempt to extricateitself from the wheel-deep sand it has been stuck in since May 2009. Engineersare studying the results of that drive to decide which of the few remainingoptions to try next.

"Earlierdrives in the past two weeks using wheel wiggles and slow wheel rotationproduced only negligible progress toward extricating Spirit," NASAofficials said in an update.

Therover's wheels slipped into deep Martiansand on May 6, 2009 and have been stuck in place ever since.Spirit?s robotic arm is too weak to push the rover up and out, and attempts todrive out have repeatedly failed, rover engineers have said.

"IfNASA does determine that the rover will not be able to get away from itscurrent location, some maneuvers to improve the tilt toward the winter sun mightbe attempted," mission managers said.

Tariq Malik
Tariq Malik
Editor-in-Chief

Tariq is the award-winning Editor-in-Chief of Space.com and joined the team in 2001. He covers human spaceflight, as well as skywatching and entertainment. He became Space.com's Editor-in-Chief in 2019. Before joining Space.com, Tariq was a staff reporter for The Los Angeles Times covering education and city beats in La Habra, Fullerton and Huntington Beach. He's a recipient of the 2022 Harry Kolcum Award for excellence in space reporting and the 2025 Space Pioneer Award from the National Space Society. He is an Eagle Scout and Space Camp alum with journalism degrees from the USC and NYU. You can find Tariq at Space.com and as the co-host to the This Week In Space podcast on the TWiT network. To see his latest project, you can follow Tariq on Twitter @tariqjmalik.