NASA's
Spirit rover, stuck in the Martian sand since May 6, has taken a picture of its
underbelly to help mission engineers get a handle on the rover's predicament.
Early last
month, Spirit was continuing
its journey around a low plateau called "Home Plate," when it hit
what one rover team member called an "insidious
invisible rover trap."
Since then,
Spirit has been mired in the sandy soil up to its hubcaps, and rover engineers
have been working to try to free the rover so that it can continue its now more
than 5-year stint on the Martian surface.
Engineers
had Spirit use its microscopic imager, located on the end of the rover's
robotic arm, to peek underneath itself to get a better view of its sandy trap.
The operation was tested
out first with Spirit's twin rover Opportunity, which is currently still
trundling along on the opposite side of Mars, and which just reached its
10-mile mark.
The
panoramic mosaic of multiple images, taken on June 2, shows the region of soft
soil now called "Troy."
Asked why
the feature was given that name, Steve Squyres, lead scientist for the Mars
Exploration Rover Project, said, "Well, we had to call it something."
"The
story of Troy is a rich one, with lots of characters and events, providing a
good source of related names for other things in the area. For example, some of
the soil we're working on right now we've named Ulysses," he added in an
email to SPACE.com.
The image
appears blurred because the microscopic camera was designed to focus on targets
just a few centimeters in front of its optics.
Scientists
are currently debating whether a small mound that appears in images to be
touching Spirit's belly actually is, and whether or not it is a rock or soil,
Squyres said. A rock touching the rover's belly plate would pose a greater risk
to any attempt to move Spirit.
The
panorama will help scientists with analyses and ground-based testing to
recreate the rover's conditions before testing various options for extracting
it from its current location.
Engineers
are using a test rover back on Earth at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., to test out strategies for extracting the rover. The test rover is
identical to Spirit and Opportunity.
Adding to
the difficulty of that task is Spirit's hobbled right front wheel, which has
been dead for three years.
Some good
news for Spirit has been the state of its energy supplies: Dust storms in
recent weeks have cleaned off the rover's solar panels, boosting Spirit's
energy supplies. While that won't give the rover more "oomph" for
extracting itself, it does buy the rover team more time to try out all their
options for freeing the stuck rover.
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