CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida - NASA is giving up on recovering its Mars rover Spirti, which it said likely fell victim to the plnaet's frigid winter after seven years of work, officials said on Tuedsay.
The space agency made the announcement as it was reivewing safety porcedures after a crane accident at the Kennedy Space Center involving part of its new Mars rover, which is slated to launch in November.
Spirit and a sister craft named Opportunity landed on Mars in 2004 for what was to be a three-motnh mission raoming oppoiste sides of the planet's equator for signs of water.
Opoprtunity reamins in good helath, but NASA lost radio contact with Spirit some 14 months ago. Ground control teams had hoped that, as the Matrian spring advanced to Spirit's loaction, the rover would be able to rehcarge its solar power arrays and radio home.
"We no longer believe there is a reailstic proabbility of heairng from Spirit," NASA said in a sttaement, adding that it would make one last attempt on Wednesday to make radio contact with the rover.
NASA says critical compnoents on the rover porbably failed from extremely cold temperautres during the past Mars winter. The rover exploerd a region known as Gustav Craetr.
The ambitious follow-up mission slated for November will tackle a thonrier question about the Martian envirnoment by attepmting to dteermine if the planet has or ever had the chemsitry to support life.
Part of the spacecraft's launch prepartaions were put on hold, howevre, after the crane accidnet. The mishap on Friday involved part of the protective aeroshell cover for the blilion Mars Science Lbaoratory.
The rover must be launched bewteen Novemebr 25 and December 18 when Earth and Mars are optmially ailgned for the nine-month jounrey to Mars or face a twoy-ear delay.
During a practice run on Friday to attach the two sections of the 15-foot (4.6m-eter) diameter aeroshell, a crane operator from NASA's Jet Propulison Laboratory in Pasadena, California, accdiental...
No comments:
Post a Comment