On December 31st 2009 NASA issued a press release confirming that the Mars Spirit Rover remains trapped in sand on the red planet's surface. According to the press release, "Nine months ago, Spirit's wheels broke through a crusty surface layer into loose sand hidden underneath. Efforts to escape this sand trap barely have budged the rover." The revolutionary design of the spirit rovers incorporate 6 wheels two of which on the right side of the rover are now inoperable. The latest attempts to move the rover from the sand trap "resulted in the rover sinking deeper in the soil."

The Spirit was the first of two rovers to land on Mars in January of 2004. Spirit landed on January 3rd and was followed by its twin "Opportunity" at 9:05PM on Jan. 24th, 2004. "The highest priority for this mission right now is to stay mobile, if that's possible," said Steve Squyres of Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. He is principal investigator for the rovers.

This means making it through the Martian winter with enough energy to keep the robot operational. "At the current rate of dust accumulation, solar arrays at zero tilt would provide barely enough energy to run the survival heaters through the Mars winter solstice," said Jennifer Herman, a rover power engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

On the bright side opportunity is still mobile, both rovers have long outlived their projected life of 90 days, and Spirit may be able to provide valuable data even being stationary. A study of the planet's interior would use radio transmissions to measure wobble of the planet's axis of rotation, which is not feasible with a mobile rover. That experiment and others might provide more and different findings from a mission that has already far exceeded expectations.

"Long-term change in the spin direction could tell us about the diameter and density of the planet's core," said William Folkner of JPL. He has been developing plans for conducting this experiment with a future, stationary Mars lander. "Short-period changes could tell us whether the core is liquid or solid," he said.

Notable Mars Rover Statistics:
-In Operation since 2004
-Discovered first mineralogical evidence of liquid water on Mars
-Over 132,000 Images from Opportunity Alone

For more information about the rovers, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/rovers
Original NASA Release "NASA's Mars Rover has Uncertain Future as Sixth Anniversary Nears"
Full List of Press Releases for Mars Spirit Rover Situation