Ending a seven-year mission, NASA has decided to cut off communications with the Mars rover Spirit. Data was last received from Spirit in March 2010, and it hasn’t been heard from since – the thinking is that the rover was damaged during the martian winter when there wasn’t enough solar power for its survival heaters to run.
Said NASA executive David Lavery:
“I think we’ll all sit around and have a sip of Guinness and reminisce about when Spirit was a wee small little rover and look back at the accomplishments and successes rover had over its entire lifetime.”
Which is all sorts of sentimental, because Spirit was just a fancy remote-controlled car, right? There’s another model, Opportunity, currently functioning, but NASA plans to launch a new generation rover called Curiosity at the end of the year. At which point I guess they’ll take Opportunity behind the martian shed with a shotgun.
[Source: engadget]
