Spirit Is in Position for Braving Another Martian Winter

Recently, officials at NASA announced that they would no longer attempt to extract the rover Spirit from Troy, and that they would turn it into a static scientific platform. The robot has been trapped in a loose patch of soil on Mars since April, 2009, and all drives aimed at dislodging it from the area have failed. Therefore, experts at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), in Pasadena, California, have been working since on positioning the battered machine in a position that would ensure it benefits from the largest amount of sunlight possible during the frigid Martian winter. All pre-winter drives have now been completed, and the robot is ready to brave yet another winter on the Red Planet.

In late 2009, Spirit also turned 6 years old, a feat that was widely celebrated among mission managers and fans that the robot has on social media networks and elsewhere. Everyone was sad to see the rover brought to its knees by the harshness of Mars, which it braves alongside its twin Opportunity since 2004, when their original mission was only 3 months long.

“On Sol 2169 (February 8, 2010), the rover's last drive before winter changed the angles of its suspension system, but it did not produce a hoped-for improvement to the overall tilt of the solar array for catching winter sunshine. Drives since Sol 2145 (January 15, 2010) moved Spirit 34 centimeters (13 inches) south-southeastward. However, a counterclockwise yawing of the rover during the drives prevented it from reducing its southerly tilt,” explain JPL experts on their website.

“Spirit will spend the coming winter tilted 9 degrees toward the south, an unfavorable attitude for the solar panels to catch rays from the sun in the northern sky. Spirit's parking positions for its previous three Martian winters tilted northward. Engineers anticipate that, due to the unfavorable tilt for this fourth winter, Spirit will be out of communication with Earth for several months,” they add.

Over the next few weeks, the machine is to be placed in a special hibernation mode that will enable it to shut down all of its primary functions and instruments. The only things that will remain on will be an internal master clock, and a tool that will allow for it to periodically check the level of electricity in its batteries. Engineers say that they will keep the machine in this low-power state for a long time, without attempting communications, until the rover detects sufficient power levels – next Martian spring – to initiate contact.

While these preparations are done, the science team is also working on taking a “before” set of pictures of the rover's surroundings. When the machine wakes up again, in the spring, it will take an “after” set, and experts will then analyze the differences between the two, so as to gage the influence of wind and other atmospheric factors on the landscape. Additionally, the team reports, “other preparations for winter will include putting the robotic arm into a position for studies of atmospheric composition when power is available and changing the stow positions of the high-gain antenna and panoramic camera to minimize shadowing of the solar panels,”