Spirit, MER-A (Mars Exploration Rover - A), is a robotic rover on Mars, active from 2004 to 2010. It was one of two rovers of NASA's ongoing Mars Exploration Rover Mission. It landed successfully on Mars at 04:35 Ground UTC on January 4, 2004, three weeks before its twin, Opportunity (MER-B), landed on the other side of the planet. Its name was chosen through a NASA-sponsored student essay competition. The rover became stuck in 2009, and it last communicated with Earth on March 22, 2010, although attempts to re-establish contact continue into 2011.
The rover completed its planned 90-sol mission. Aided by cleaning events that resulted in higher power from its solar panels, Spirit went on to function effectively over twenty times longer than NASA planners expected following mission completion. Spirit also logged about 10 kilometers of driving instead of the planned 1 km, allowing more extensive geological analysis of Martian rocks and planetary surface features. Initial scientific results from the first phase of the mission (the 90-sol prime mission) were published in a special issue of the journal Science.
On May 1, 2009 (5 years, 3 months, 27 Earth days after landing; 21.6 times the planned mission duration), Spirit became stuck in soft soil. This was not the first of the mission's "embedding events" and for the following eight months NASA carefully analyzed the situation, running Earth-based theoretical and practical simulations, and finally programming the rover to make extrication drives in an attempt to free itself. These efforts continued until January 26, 2010 (6 years and 22 days after landing; 24.6 times the planned mission duration), when NASA officials announced that the rover was likely irrecoverably obstructed by its location in soft soil, though it will continue to perform scientific research from its current location.
There has been no communication with Spirit since sol 2210 (March 22, 2010) and there is some concern that the rover was not able to survive the Martian winter. However, the rover team plans to continue to attempt to contact the lander, which may be hibernating while increasing solar levels charge its batteries, until at least summer solstice at Spirit's location in March 2011.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration Rover project for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington.
scientific objectives of the Mars Exploration Rover mission are to:
Search for and characterize a variety of rocks and soils that hold clues to past water activity. In particular, samples sought will include those that have minerals deposited by water-related processes such as precipitation, evaporation, sedimentary cementation or hydrothermal activity.
Determine the distribution and composition of minerals, rocks, and soils surrounding the landing sites.
Determine what geologic processes have shaped the local terrain and influenced the chemistry. Such processes could include water or wind erosion, sedimentation, hydrothermal mechanisms, volcanism, and cratering.
Perform calibration and validation of surface observations made by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter instruments. This will help determine the accuracy and effectiveness of various instruments that survey Martian geology from orbit.
Search for iron-containing minerals, identify and quantify relative amounts of specific mineral types that contain water or were formed in water, such as iron-bearing carbonates.
Characterize the mineralogy and textures of rocks and soils and determine the processes that created them.
Search for geological clues to the environmental conditions that existed when liquid water was present.
Assess whether those environments were conducive to life.
During the next two decades, NASA will continue to conduct missions to address whether life ever arose on Mars. The search begins with determining whether the Martian environment was ever suitable for life. Life, as we understand it, requires water, so the history of water on Mars is critical to finding out if the Martian environment was ever conducive to life. Although the Mars Exploration Rovers do not have the ability to detect life directly, they are offering very important information on the habitability of the environment during the planet's history.
To the rover
To commemorate Spirit's great contribution to the exploration of Mars, an asteroid, 37452 Spirit, has been named after it. The name was proposed by Ingrid van Houten-Groeneveld who along with Cornelis Johannes van Houten and Tom Gehrels discovered the asteroid on September 24, 1960.
Ruben H. Fleet Museum and the Liberty Science Center also has an IMAX show called Roving Mars that documents the journey of both Spirit and Opportunity, using both CG and actual imagery.
From the rover
On January 27, 2004 NASA memorialized the crew of Apollo 1 by naming three hills to the north of "Columbia Memorial Station" as the Apollo 1 Hills. On February 2, 2004 the astronauts on Columbia's final mission were further memorialized when NASA named a set of hills to the east of the landing site the Columbia Hills Complex, denoting seven peaks in that area as "Anderson", "Brown", "Chawla", "Clark", "Husband", "McCool", and "Ramon"; NASA has submitted these geographical feature names to the IAU for approval.
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