The Spirit Rover Makes a Detour

NASA's enduring Spirit rover is currently faced with a navigational problem, in that its path over a portion of Martian soil known as the Home Plate is obstructed by piles of loose rocks. These formations are very dangerous to the frail machine, so mission managers have decided to take the long way around, simply going around the area. This would, indeed, lengthen the amount of time it would otherwise have taken for the robot to get to its summery destination. But officials at NASA say that, at this point, the safety of the 5-year-old rover comes first, and that they are unwilling to take any chances.

Throughout 2008, Spirit stood atop the northern ridge of the Home Plate, a 5-foot (1.5-meter) -tall formation overlooking the field below. The latter, a flat-topped deposit made of hardened ash, was the ideal place wherefrom to conduct scientific observations and measurements of the Plate below, but now Spirit has to move to another location across the field. There, it will spend this summer and the winter of 2009. Chances are that the tiny robot will survive this winter as well, which would make it the 6th such season it spends on the Martian surface, while remaining operational.

However, NASA scientists have it that, regardless of the fact that the machine needs to take a circuitous route, it will have to travel a distance far shorter than its twin, Opportunity. The second probe is currently trekking a vast, open space on the opposite size of the plateau, which it moves across at a fairly low speed. Spirit is heading, at the moment, towards some feats of Mars known as “Von Braun,” a steep mound, and “Goddard,” an irregular bowl, some 150-foot (45-meter) -wide. The team behind the project believes that these features will offer a rich area for scientific observations.

It also adds that it will offer the perfect place for Spirit to endure the 2009 winter, which is very likely to hit the small robot with extremely low temperatures. Until then, the region will also provide the rover with sufficient amounts of energy to successfully carry out its appointed tasks.

“Spirit could not make progress in the last two attempts to get up onto Home Plate. Alternatively, we are driving Spirit around Home Plate to the east. Spirit will have to go around a couple of small ridges that extend to the northeast, and then see whether a route east of Home Plate looks traversable. If that route proves not to be traversable, a route around the west side of Home Plate is still an option,” NASA JPL scientist John Callas, who is the Mars Exploration Rovers project manager, explained.