April 4, 2011
Is Anyone Up There?
NASA makes one last effort to contact a Mars Rover that has been silent for more than a year
By Andrea Delbanco
Hello? Is anyone up there? NASA's twin Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity , have been exploring the Red Planet since 2004. But a little more than a year ago, NASA lost contact with Spirit. The space agency has tried several strategies to make contact with the rover, but Spirit has not sent back any signals. Now, NASA's gearing up to give it one more try. If it doesn't work, will it be time to say goodbye to Spirit?
Twin Rovers
Spirit landed on Mars on January 4, 2004. Three weeks later, Opportunity arrived. Soon after, the rovers parachuted to opposite sides of Mars. Spirits' original mission was only designed to last for three months, but Spirit has worked for more than five years doing bonus-time extended missions. Both rovers have made important discoveries about ancient Mars, including wet environments that may have been able to support microbial life.
Spirit is solar-powered. It got stuck in a sand trap in April 2009. The rover tried to wiggle free, but stayed stuck and could not tilt itself toward the sun as the Martian winter approached. Without enough energy reaching its solar panels, it went into hibernation and has not communicated since March 22, 2010.
One More Try
The fact that Spirit has not called home likely shows that something is more seriously wrong than just a power issue. NASA scientists are losing hope of ever reconnecting with Spirit, but they will give it one more try. Ground controllers are paging Spirit over a range of frequencies and at different times during the day in case its internal clock stopped working and it lost track of time. They also are commanding the rover to turn on its backup radio transmitter in case the main one is dead.
If this final effort to connect isn't successful, NASA will shift the focus to Opportunity . Spirit's odometer is stuck at 4.8 miles, but Opportunity is still on the move. It has travelled 16.6 miles so far, and is currently rolling towards another crater it has yet to explore.
Max- There’s a lot to explore in space, especially on Mars, because we need to know can the planet be our second Earth. There are also many planets that we can live, but most of them are too far, and may also have problems for living on it. So we think Mars is the best place for humans to live, and there are some similar things than Earth. Now, two rovers are exploring Mars from seven years ago, and they are executing some missions. But, five years after they were on Mars, one of the rovers, called Spirit, was stuck on a sand trap, even the rover wanted to free itself from the trap, it couldn’t! So it started sinking, and it can’t be adjusted towards the Sun, and Spirit is solar powered, so it ran out of energy after about a few months, and it stopped connecting from a year ago. When Spirit was stuck into the sand trap, it had some problems with some things. Its internal clock stopped a few times, and the radio transmitter was also broken so they had to use the backup radio transmitter. Now, NASA gives one last try to connect with Spirit. If it fails, it is the end for Spirit, and NASA would focus on the other rover, |
