The end of the road for the Mars Spirit vehicle

"We drove the car, literally until the wheels did not move. At the beginning of the mission, we did not expect that this would be the way the project would end," said Dave Lavery, program manager at NASA Headquarters.

In the wee hours of May 25 the scientists and engineers of the Mars Spirit rover team sent the final command to contact the rover. Over the past year, they have sent over 1,200 such instructions and heard nothing back from the stuck and probably frozen vehicle. "We are exhausted after trying all possible scenarios to contact Spirit, and the chances of success now seem zero" said John Callas, project manager.

"At this point the season is winding down and we could not carry out any of the scientific tasks even if we heard from the team now. The Deep Space Network occasionally listens to Spirit when resources are appropriate, but we have decided not to do anything beyond this last command.”
Spirit landed on Mars on March 3, 2004, overcame many mishaps and survived much longer than the ninety days set for him, for nearly six years he rode long distances, climbed hills, sometimes ones he wasn't designed for - he drove and stopped near interesting rocks along the way, and all the time he transmitted Information collected and enriched us with new things about Mars in the past and present.
Spirit got stuck on the Martian soil in May 2009, and that was the beginning of the end. The team spent months planning to get him out of this situation, and then months trying to drive her out, but they ran out of time and energy in the approaching red-hot winter. The crew was unable to position the rover well to capture sunlight on the solar panels and after another icy winter, Spirit has now succumbed to the harsh Martian environment.
"We drove the car, literally until the wheels did not move. At the beginning of the mission, we did not expect that this would be the way the project would end," said Dave Lavery, program manager at NASA Headquarters.
"We always knew we would get to this point," Callas said in a televised press conference. "And that's really what we wanted, to utilize these vehicles (Spirit and Opportunity) as much as possible. If someone had said on the ninetieth day that the car would survive for six years, no one would have believed it."

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