Has Spirit Lost Her Spirit?

June 22, 2009

Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Spirit has gotten herself into a bit of a pickle, but it's not all bad news.

When trundling around a location called "Home Plate" (a plateau in Gusev Crater) in May, Spirit lost her footing and spun her wheels into the loose Martian regolith. Attempts to extricate the 408 lb robot failed and she's been beached ever since.

In an effort to work out how bad the situation was, mission controllers sent commands to Spirit to examine herself with the microscopic imager attached to the end of her robotic arm. As can be seen in the image above, it's very blurry (the imager is more familiar with examining small rocks up close rather than assembling an escape plan), but the panoramic scene reveals a lot about the problem the rover is facing...

By angling the microscopic imager to look under the body of the rover, the situation is clear: To the far right of the picture, one of Spirit's wheels are buried deep in the loose topsoil and rocky debris appears to be touching Spirit's underbelly. The image has been tilted to represent the incline the wheeled robot was attempting to overcome.

This is very bad news for battle-hardened Spirit.

As the first of the Mars Exploration Rovers to land on Mars, Spirit has probably had the hardest time. Although twin rover Opportunity has had its ups and downs, Spirit has been soldiering on, even though one of her wheels broke down years ago and she's been suffering some worrying memory glitches.

Considering the Mars Exploration Rovers are five years past their warranty (the planned mission length was 5 months... back in 2004!), they're not doing badly, but are they beginning to show some crippling signs of rover old age? As for Spirit, is this latest jam proof that the rover is losing her spirit to continue?

Actually, you might be surprised to hear that NASA is fairly upbeat about the situation. Due to a fortuitous "cleaning event" -- Mars winds blowing dust off the rover's solar panels -- there has been a boost in energy. Although the rover is now stuck, mission controllers have some very exciting things planned for Spirit. There might even be the chance to do some stargazing!

Naturally, most rover operations happen during the day, and they preserve their energy throughout the night by going into a low energy state. However, Spirit is currently collecting 828 watt-hours of power; the rover's batteries are fully charged and there is plenty of power in surplus for experiments. Compare this with November 2008 when Spirit's dust-covered solar array was only generating 89 watt-hours of power. So, energy-wise, Spirit is in good shape.

Although mission control is working hard to find a fix to Spirit's jam, commands might be sent to Spirit to take advantage of the surplus in power, and carry out a robotic astronomy campaign at night.

So, has Spirit really lost her spirit for Mars exploration? No, not by a long shot.

Sources: NASA, Universe Today, Astrongine

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[QuarkSpin]

None of us are counting Spirit out yet. What a grand set of engineering challenges Spirit has placed before the engineering team over 5 years! If not for dragging a wheel, would the sulfur and silica deposits have been uncovered? What would have been learned (from an engineering perspective) if everything had gone perfectly? JPL has been blessed with two (obviously) well-engineered robots that have far exceeded published expectations. Onward!