NASA Unveils Plan to Free the Mars Rover SPIRIT!

It has been months in the making, and countless theories and possibilities brainstormed, but NASA has announced that it has a plan in place to begin what will hopefully accomplish the extraction of the Mars Rover SPIRIT from the "quicksand" trap it has been embedded in.

The "soil" is so fine it more closely resembles talcum powder than what we could call sand or dirt.

Click HERE to see a full circle panorama of Spirit's current location.

Click HERE to see a large image detailing the path of the Mars Rover SPIRIT since arriving at the plateau designated "Home Plate." The yellow line marks the path taken, and you can see the location of SPIRIT's current predicament, labelled "Troy."

They will begin to run the extraction program on Monday. Scientists expect it to be a painstakingly slow process, but little by little, they hope to once again have SPIRIT roaming free on Mars. Even if the worst occurs, and they are not able to extract SPIRIT from it's sandy trap, the area where it is located is highly rich in geological oddities, and much good science could still be done. -FUPPETS- hopes it does not come to that!

MARS ROVER UPDATE

-FUPPETS- loves the Mars Rovers.

The Mars Rover named Spirit, stuck in deep Martian sands since April, is going through what scientists deem Amnesia events. The Flash memory that stores observational data for the Rover before it goes into it's nightly "hibernation" cycle is suffering from something, maybe power outages, that are not allowing the Rover to store data overnight during it's "sleep."
There are other data storage options on Spirit but they require the Rover to send all it's data to Earth before it goes into it's sleep cycle. Something similar occurred a few months ago.
NASA scientists have been using a Rover double to practice different techniques to extricate Spirit from it's sandy trap. It is a painstaking effort and hopefully it will pay off soon. The current problems with the memory have made this a tricky proposition.
Spirit and it's twin Opportunity have been roaming around on Mars since 2004. Originally slated to have a 90- day "life," these rovers are so very well constructed and engineered that they have managed to survive 6 Martian winters! -FUPPETS- loves that!

HERE is a great F.A.Q. for information on the two Rovers where Mars rover engineer Ashley Stroupe answers people's questions.

NASA also has a website entitled FREE SPIRIT, which is seeking any ideas to help extricate this Rover.
This is an image from earlier in October of the sand that Spirit is stuck in.

Humanity's Surrogate On Mars Nears It's End *UPDATED*

In January of the year 2004, humans from the country called the United States Of America sent towards Mars two remotely operated vehicles named Spirit and Opportunity whose mission it was to explore the Martian geology with some of the most advanced and innovative equipment they could create.

They landed safely and have been crawling along the surface of Mars for these past five years, surviving broken wheels, dust storms, Martian winters of minimal sunlight to power themselves, ridiculous cold and unbearable heat.

Click here to see an image of Spirit's travel path.

Both rovers were originally expected to fulfill a 90 Martian day mission. They have far exceeded humanity's expectations and hopes for them.
At the start of this month, Spirit became stuck in sand/dust that was described by NASA scientists as akin to the finest of talcum powder.
In the vastness of our solar system and of space it is the small things that can kill you. The other rover, Opportunity, is way too far away on the other side of the planet to come and help in any way. Spirit already had been driving backwards for the better part of three years due to a broken right front wheel it has been dragging along behind it.

The Rover's broken wheel ironically allowed it to make a great discovery when, as shown in the image above, the wheel scraped off the Martian topsoil and exposed a white substance that turned out to be ice. This was a great discovery.
The Rovers have been stuck in dunes before, but this one appears to be too much to overcome. Scientists are busy planning different strategies to try and free Spirit. -FUPPETS- will keep you updated as events occur.

*Below is an image of the MARS Rover Spirit. taken by itself, showing the current situation and the soft terrain it is stuck in. Click the image for a more detailed, and larger version.

-FUPPETS- Celebrates 5 year Anniversary of the Mars Exploration Rover Mission!

Our history of efforts with Martian spaceships is fraught with failure. Many of our spacecraft either are lost in flight, or have crashed into the Red Planet. Many of the missions that have survived the perils of intra-solar-system travel have been short lived. That is not the case any longer.
In what may very well be the single most successful and fruitful unmanned mission in the history of humanity, the two Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, are still kicking and rolling around the surface of mars, after FIVE YEARS! They have survived the harsh Martian winter 5 times, due to excellent engineering, painstaking construction, and inventive operations by the crews in charge of actually driving and programming the Rovers.
This is an amazing achievement, and one which is not being given enough praise in the regular news media, other than as a curiosity. -FUPPETS- is fucking amped up about this shit, you can be sure.
There have been mechanical issues, and one of the rovers is operating with just 4 of it's original 6 wheels, but the biggest issue the rovers have faced is one of dust. The Martian dust is very fine and covers the solar energy panels with a fine layer which obstructs the solar energy the rovers are dependent on. Below is an image of Spirit on it's one-year anniversary. You can see the layer of dust on it's solar panels.

On the Moon, this would be fatal, but on Mars, which does have a tenuous atmosphere, occasional wind storms actually serve to clean off this dust! This was a purely lucky occurrence which the NASA scientists were overjoyed at experiencing. Without these random dust storms the rovers would have died a long time ago. At one point, Spirit was operating at less than 60% of the energy it normally needed, when, in a completely unexpected surprise, the power capabilities jumped to over 93%! Once the scientists had gotten over their joy they realized that a "dust devil" had miraculously swept across the Spirit Rover, and cleaned off much of the Martian dirt from the solar panels. Incredible. This has happened repeatedly for both Rovers and is the main reason they are still going today. Below is an image of Spirit, 6 months after the above image, with it's solar panels clean.

Here is a Martian "dust devil" photographed by Spirit.

Human ingenuity and skill and intelligence fucking rules all. Here's hoping the Mars Rovers continue in their mission. When you look to the sky at night, take the time to ponder about these extensions of our humanity that are out in the bitter cold of a foreign planet, doing the dirty work that humans need done so as to allow our species to spread and prosper throughout the Solar System, as we need to do, for we are explorers first and foremost.

NAME NASA'S NEW MARS EXPLORER!

Mars has been in the news a lot lately, partly due to the unexpected and overwhelming success of the Mars Rovers, and of the Phoenix Mars Lander. If you know of anyone under 18 that is interested in outer space and space travel and such bad-ass fucking things, take them over to this NASA website, http://marsrovername.jpl.nasa.gov/, where they have instructions for kids to write in and suggest names for the new Mars Rover.

Here is an image of the new Rover, yet to be named, as they are placing it in the protective ring which will encapsulate it as it makes it's trip to the planet Mars. (Click image to enlarge)

Once it is inside, they will then take it all apart again, triple-check all the devices, connections, and wiring, and the proceed to put it all back together yet again in time for launch. This exhaustive process is the only way to ensure that every possibility has been checked out, and it allows for multiple redundancies, in case something were to fail. It is the only way to go when you have a project that takes 5-10 years to come to fruition only to fully operate out of the guiding eyes and hands of the people that put it all together. INSANE!