The tilted image below shows the rover’s dire condition. Sloped at a roughly 20¨ angle, Spirit’s wheels are deeply entrenched in the sand. Luckily, Spirit’s chassis appears to be free from major obstructions, giving some hope to crews working out a rescue plan.

Spirit's undercarriage as photographed by the rover's microscopic imaging camera. The blurriness results from the camera's focal length of 6cm. Image: NASA

Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab are studying the images to develop a plan that will free the ailing rover. This isn’t the first time a mars rover has become stuck. In 2005, Spirit’s twin rover, Opportunity, became disabled by the sand. Opportunity’s foray with powdery martian sand resulted in a month of downtime before slow forward progress inched her into the clear.

Another tactic for removing sand imprisoned mars rovers is to back up the rover out of the martian sand trap on the same path it went in. It is unlikely, however, that engineers will reverse Spirit out of the sand trap. In 2006, Spirit’s front right wheel permanently jammed. Since then, Spirit has operated in reverse, dragging her jammed wheel — making backing up out of her sandy tomb a difficult task.

Opportunity, Spirit's twin mars rover, is shown here making slow progress while stuck in 2005. Image: NASA

This news comes after a rough year for the rover. Last year, budget concerns resulted in an attempt to shut down the rover project as we know it. Recently, Spirit underwent a bout of amnesia, and could not report what it had recently done. Engineers were also worried about a possible lock-up in one of Spirit’s middle wheels, which a reassuring roll test suggested no problem existed. One can only be thankful that the rovers have lasted almost 1900 days past their 90 day planned mission.

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[June 3 Press Release]

NASA's Scarab Prototype in Testing

NASA’s Lunar rover prototype, Scarab, is designed to carry a drill and do exploratory drilling on the Moon. The rover is specially designed for the Moon’s surface and includes sophisticated tires designed to operate on the (pressure-less) Lunar surface and achieve high traction.

The drill can take samples of the Moons surface up to about one meter in depth. Once the sample is drilled, the rover crushes the sample and tests it with on-board lab equipment to determine how good the site may be for a future Moon base. The samples are tested for minerals as well as gases.

Watch this interesting video about Scarab’s mission and how it was designed.

NASA ARES Mars UAV

The NASA Ares project is a rocket propelled UAV designed to fly one mile above the surface of Mars. Ares is five meters long with a six meter wingspan. It can provide high resolution images so fine it could read the ingredients off a candy wrapper from a mile away.

Ares has been flying at 125,000 feet over Oregon to simulate the atmospheric conditions on Mars. The atmosphere on Mars is only about 1% as dense as earth, which presented quite a challenge to aircraft designers.

The Ares UAV contains many sensors and scientific instruments. Most importantly, a mass spectrometer to measure the composition of Mars atmosphere. If the Mars atmosphere shows significant quantities of “biological gasses”, gasses which are produced primarily by living organisms, it would be a strong indication that life once lived, or is living, on Mars. Coming after NASA‘s recent discovery of water on Mars, the presence of these biological gases would provide further evidence that Mars could host life.

Perhaps the coolest aspect of Ares is that once flying over Mars, the aircraft will be streaming live images of the Martian surface to viewers in the United States and around the world.

Other features include:

• Simultaneous, in-situ, regional-scale measurement of the Mars atmosphere, surface, and interior
• Bridges critical scale and resolution measurement gaps of remote sensing and surface exploration
• Scout for future sample return and surface mission site selection
• Magnetic survey with spatial resolution two orders of magnitude higher than provided by Mars Global Surveyor, with ability to resolve the crustal magnetism source structure
• High-resolution measurements that cannot be achieved from orbit
• Geologic diversity from regional-scale coverage that cannot be achieved by surface missions
• In-situ atmospheric science
• Ability to traverse terrain inaccessible to surface vehicles

…

[NASA - Ares Project Site]