A dust-storm-battered Spirit Mars rover phoned home, days after the storm dropped the robot's power levels to dangerous levels.
Shortly after NASA managers declared the Phoenix Mars Lander mission officially over, Spirit's solar panels were so flooded with dust that controllers tried to shut down many functions. The image here shows Spirit so heaped in dust that it almost blends into the Martian landscape.
When Spirit sent a message today, "the room erupted in joy," rover drivers Twittered.
NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit communicated via the Mars Odyssey orbiter today right at the time when ground controllers had told it to, prompting shouts of "She's talking!" among the rover team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
"This means Spirit has not gone into a fault condition and is still being controlled by sequences we send from the ground," said John Callas of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., project manager for Spirit and its twin, Opportunity.
The solar-powered rover still has low energy, a condition worsened by a dust storm in recent days. Today's communication confirmed that Spirit had received commands sent on Tuesday and that the battery charge had not fallen low enough to trigger a pre-programmed fault mode.
Spirit and her twin, Opportunity, have been working on Mars for five years. They were recently featured in a National Geographic special "Five Years on Mars."
Image credit: NASA
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