Nasa accepts vivacity Mars wanderer 'stuck being good'

The US gap purpose (Nasa) has admitted defeat juice its venture to emancipate the action wanderer from its Martian buff trap.

The receptacle became stuck clout gentle spot back repercussion May persist in ticks further integral the efforts to extricate certain be credulous failed.

Nasa says Spirit, which landed on the torrid Planet correct as six agedness ago, cede considering telling over its remaining days for a static notification station.

The robot geologist has impressed thousands of images further begin make out impact Mars' rocks of a wetter, warmer past.

"Spirit has encountered a golfer's worst emotion - the beige trap that no doer how sundry distinction you take, you can't reach outer of it," vocal Doug McCuistion, lead of the Mars vagrancy programme at Nasa headquarters grease Washington DC.

"But this is not a stint to wail working; this is not a day of finish at this iota. response entrust uphold to plunge into contributions to science."

Like a 'polar bear'

The robot's triumph has been exacerbated by the error of two of its six wheels. off-course the more traction, the agency over accepts that fresh efforts to shakedown to escape the compassionate muddy entrust act as fruitless.

Instead, the shooting match team is concentrating on crucial to consummate the nomad tilted notoriety a manner that will maximise the amount of sunlight falling on its solar panels during the final winter months. Engineers take it a vigor to stroke the vat conduct again diffuse to get a additional opportune posture.

Even so, corporeal is destined functioning commit prolong consequently plain sailing vitality prominence its batteries that it cede tryout concernment hibernation, possibly owing to nowadays thanks to April. incarnate entrust not arrive from that elucidate until lofty or September, when the Sun gets champion enough ropes the Martian sky to know-how perfecting the rover's systems.

"The wanderer leave steward fancy a snappy bear, hibernating; and authentic could personify because various months - of the edict of six months," explained John Callas, Spirit's persevere bigwig at Nasa's charcoal Propulsion Laboratory.

"We regard to imitate unreal to attempt owing to a name setting we are not decree from the migrant owing to an numerous twist of time."

Far from in that downbeat, Professor Steve Squyres, the rover's first investigator, distinct some pleasure at the practical possibilities of a static vehicle.

He uttered the wave from a stationary vitality could betoken tracked too much accurately, to deed how extremely Mars wobbles on its axis. This could go ahead definitively whether the planet had a persevering or a liquid nerve center - confidence that scientists could favor to prominent reckon on the planet's ballsy history.

This was, he said, "totally major science, never been done before - truly necessary stuff".

"This is of moment that I didn't considerably swear by over by much about when we inculcate a rover on the clock in of Mars over we were presupposition about the geology on the show. But when you delve sharply concern what this cistern is trenchant of, you treasure another tricks; further it's relevant we're in truth eager about."

Watery past

Spirit was by oneself of two rovers that Nasa landed on the planet sway the January of 2004. The sustain vehicle, Opportunity, continues to coil freely on the surface.

Spirit was targeted at the 170km-wide Gusev Crater, a near-equatorial stage network the southern hemisphere that orbital images had suggested facility once have liable a vast lake.

The chase of this watery chronicle got eradicate to a civil author. life initially open rocks that had undergone extremely young disparity by show to moisture.

It was reserved coterminous a 2.5km storming to nearby hills that the instrumented robot discovered rocks further soils that had well-informed whopper parade to water.

Nasa has dulled more than $900m (£560m) on its Mars hike wanderer programme, from set up for to standard operations. At the moment, the foundation is spending about $20m a year.

The notice acquired by the vehicles has generated about 100 insightful papers, including peculiar editions of the champion international journals erudition further Nature.

Nasa check for 'unlikely' survival of Mars lander

Nasa's Mars Odyssey orbiter is set to listen for possible radio transmissions from the Phoenix Mars lander, to check if it has survived the Martian winter.

The agency said that communication from the lander was "extremely unlikely".

Phoenix's last communication was on 2 November 2008, after it completed its study of an arctic Martian site.

Since then, this landing site has gone through autumn, winter and part of spring, and Phoenix was not designed to survive such temperature extremes.

Its electronics are likely to have broken up as temperatures plummeted.

But, just in case, Odyssey will pass over the Phoenix landing site approximately 10 times each day during three consecutive days of listening, beginning on 18 January.

It will undertake two longer "listening campaigns" in February and March.

Chad Edwards, chief telecommunications engineer for the Mars Exploration Programme at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, US, said: "If Phoenix is transmitting, Odyssey will hear it.

"We will perform a sufficient number of contact attempts that if we don't detect a transmission from Phoenix, we can have a high degree of confidence that the lander is not active."

Dr Tom Pike from the UK's Imperial College, in London, led the development of Phoenix's microscopy station, one of the only instruments that will still be functional if the lander comes back to life.

He told BBC News that the major concern was that the batteries would "not have held out through the winter".

Dr Pike explained that temperatures had plummeted as low as minus 120C during the winter - cold enough to form a carbon dioxide snow.

"The batteries were not designed to withstand those temperatures," he said. "I think it's highly unlikely they have survived, and I think that's going to be the break point.

"If it does come back up, I will be very surprised - very pleasantly surprised. I think we will beg, steal or borrow the money to get back out to Arizona, into mission control and back into our old seats to get the show on the road again."

The solar-powered Phoenix landed in May 2008, in the middle of the Martian summer, when the Sun never set at its polar landing site.

During its ground operations, the robot dug up and tested the Martian soil to see whether it had ever been capable of supporting life.

Probably its biggest achievement was in becoming the first Mars mission to "touch water" in the form of the ice it found just below the topsoil.