Spirit Rover End of Life?

[scca229]

Originally Posted by Hallry

Hasn't Spirit been stuck for quite a while now? I thought that one or two of the wheels had broken a few years back, leaving the rover unable to adjust its solar panels and get enough power.

Spirit became stuck for the last time on May 1, 2009. It had freed itself a few times before, but this time had done the job much better. NASA conceded that no more movement was going to happen as of Jan 26, 2010 but would continue to carry out experiments.

That all came to a halt on Mar 22, 2010 when the last communication was heard. NASA continued to try to get communications until May 25, 2010, when they called it off. They were hoping that whatever happened might resolve itself with some better power generating possibilities after the Martian winter passed, but still nothing was heard.

The project still had time slots and such on the Deep Space Network which is one of the things being freed up with the announcement for other things, one being the Mars Science Laboratory mission.