I received a link from Dave Lavery this morning…
“NASA is ending attempts to regain contact with the long-lived Mars Exploration Rover Spirit, which last communicated on March 22nd, 2010.”
Thank You NASA and Spirit for a very good run.
That is literally the saddest thing I’ve ever known of…
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.
Now I’m crying about robots before the FRC season even starts.
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.
Will there be a rescue mission?? C’mon, they sent one after Matt Damon, and we like Spirit a whole lot more! 
No robot left behind!
After a decade on a far away world, running the rover program at 50% capacity ain’t half bad What a great investment in human capital.
I can think of very few things in my lifetime that has provided as much inspiration and has captured the imagination of millions better than the Mars Rovers.
NASA Team, thanks for leaving tracks in the red soil. Now lets go put some footprints there
I would love to see a last panel where an ‘alien life form’ discovers Spirit Rover…
I don’t know why, but for some reason this newspaper from Tennessee is reprinting a JPL press release from five years ago. The Spirit rover shut down in 2010, and we stopped trying to contact her long ago. The Opportunity and Curiosity rovers continue on (currently at Sol 4217 and 1184, respectively).
-dave
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I guess they were a little late to the party.
That really helps to explain this line from the article:
MSL is scheduled to launch later this year.
Sorry about that, LinkedIn sent me the message with an indication it was a Dave Lavery announcement. Article is dated Nov 30, 2015. On another note, has anyone noticed the increasing amount of news that is contradictory and misspelled?
I thought this was odd as well. I didn’t comment on it because I figured I was missing something and I didn’t want to appear flawed on chiefdelphi, lest the vultures descend.
Emperors new clothes?