After months of trying, NASA is calling it quits on freeing the Spirit rover from the Martian sand that it’s been stuck in since May of 2009.  Unfortunately, after six years of tireless service, the end might be very near for the rover, which faces a severe Martian winter in its current position. NASA engineers will spend the next few weeks preparing Spirit to face the winter weather, and hope that it will be able to continue on as a stationary scientific platform.

“Spirit is not dead; it has just entered another phase of its long life,” said Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “We told the world last year that attempts to set the beloved robot free may not be successful. It looks like Spirit’s current location on Mars will be its final resting place.”

The Martian winter will begin in May. Until then, NASA will try and use remaining power to change the inclination of Spirit in order to help it capture more sunlight. NASA says that unless Spirit can be positioned in a better position, it is unlikely that it will survive.

Meanwhile, Opportunity, Spirit’s sister, continues to amble onwards towards a crater called Endeavor. NASA has some good videos summarizing Spirit’s six years.

NASA is working on an UAV to fly above the surface of mars and take high resolution video of the landscape below. The ARES mission will involve a 6.5 meter wingspan UAV that will cruise along 1 mile above the martian surface. The cameras on board are very high resolution, such that, “if there was a candy wrapper on the surface, we could read the name and ingrediants off of it.”

Once the plane reaches the surface of Mars, NASA plans on live streaming the video feed from the plane. That will definitely be something to watch for. No word on how long the plane will remain airborne.

Riding with Robots brings us a neat story of how NASA has recycled one of their missions, and turned it into another. The EPOXI (Extrasolar Planet Observation and Deep Impact Extended Investigation) mission utilizes the main vehicle from the Deep Impact mission to performan another series of experiments which will perform a close (600 miles) fly-by of the comet Hartley 2 on October 11, 2010. During its trip to Hartley 2, the space probe will pass by Earth a total of 4 times and is currently in a solar orbit. The probe uses Earth’s gravity to gently nudge it into the path of the comet. The mission, which is being run by the University of Maryland, will only end up costing tax-payers $40 million USD (compared to $330 million USD cost of Deep Impact).

Congradulations to the Phoenix Mars Mission team! Phoenix touched down and has sent the first pictures back to Earth. Once again, NASA has accomplished an amazing feat. Now begins Phoenix’s three month mission.



(more…)

The Phoenix Mars Mission is scheduled to touch down on Mars today, May 25th, at around 9PM EST. Keep track of the progress on the mission’s website. We’ll keep you updated with details.

Update: You can watch live coverage of the landing on NASA TV. Mission briefing starts at 3PM EST, and landing coverage starts at 6PM EST.

Update 2: Here is a detailed minute-by-minute breakdown of what Phoenix will be doing for the rest of the day. The propulsion system pressurization will begin shortly. NASA will also be live-blogging the landing from inside Mission Control.

(more…)