One of the wheels of the space vehicle "Spirit" stopped working, just as winter is coming and the sunlight is enough to charge the batteries for a one-hour trip a day only
One of the six wheels of the Spirit space vehicle, which is carrying out a mission to Mars, stopped working. Now the vehicle must reach the slope using a propeller, so that it can absorb sunlight and continue to function. This is the right-front wheel of the vehicle. This wheel has suffered from similar problems in the past, but this week the motor that turns this wheel stopped working. This was reported by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. "The engine is not generating any current," said Jacob Matiewicz, director of the vehicle's engineering team.
The engineers are now checking if there is a fault in the contacts in the electric motor.
"Spirit" is trying to reach a position from which it can absorb solar energy as much as possible during the winter. The car has energy left for only one hour of driving every day and that too, only if it is in a flat area. Summer will reach the area on Mars where the Spirit is found in only a hundred days, at the end of the winter season.
The various tests conducted on the faulty wheel took up time necessary to charge the space vehicle's energy. This is the vehicle's 779th day on Mars. The vehicle is about 100 meters away from a point in the northern area of a formation known as "Givat McCall" on Friday, a point facing towards the place where the sun is, and this is so that the vehicle can direct the solar collectors to it in the southern winter.
"Spirit" and its twin "Opportunity" landed on either side of the Red Planet in January 2004. Originally intended to stay on Mars for 90 days. "Opportunity" is closer to the equator of Mars and is on its way to a giant crater, at a rate of about 2 km per hour.
