14 DAY TRIAL // Officials at the American space agency announce that the Martian rover Spirit is currently being chilled to increasingly lower temperatures, as the winter season on the Red Planet approaches the machine's location. The latest communications attempt with it revealed that the robot is still operational, although it is experiencing a surge in power requirements. Spirit has been keeping a constant position since late February, when engineers managing it sent the last drive commands, Space reports.
The machine has already braved a number of winters at its current location, as it has been roaming the Red Planet for more than 6 Earth years. But the cold seasons on Mars are very long and demanding, and Spirit is not deployed at a latitude that would allow it to operate continuously. Therefore, it needs to shut down most of its systems as the winter approaches, in order to save energy. What mission managers hope for is that the machine will continue to gather sufficient power during the winter to awake in the coming Martian spring.
At this point, the systems on Spirit do not show any unusual signs of damage. In other words, it is in the same situation it's been in during the first winters it spent on Mars. But in the upcoming months it will experience lower and lower temperatures, which will force its heating device to draw up more power from its reserves. This is a very challenging task, given that the amount of sunlight its solar panels receive will continue to diminish as the Sun spends less and less time in the sky above the robotic explorer's location.
Since Spirit became embedded in the patch of loose sand now known as Troy, scientists at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), in Pasadena, California, have been trying to get it unstuck, but with little success. Progress has been slow, and eventually the team, which has been managing the MER program since day one, decided to abandon their drive attempts, and turned Spirit into a stationary science platform. But the thing is that its final location is not necessarily the best one to ensure that it benefits from maximum chances of survival.
While mission managers are hurrying to make the final adjustments to Spirit before the rover has too little power to sustain communications, the rover Opportunity is happily trekking along on the other side of Mars. It is conducting its investigations at a latitude that allows it to benefit from sufficient sunlight around the Martian year, and therefore it does not need to “hibernate” for the winter.