NASA readies 'sandbox' to plot Mars rover's escape

[Vampire123]

NASA plans to fill a 'sandbox' with simulated Martian soil this week to test escape manoeuvres for the Mars rover Spirit, which has been stuck in a sand trap called "Troy" since early May.

When the rover first became stuck, its wheels slipped so much in the fine, flour-like soil that Spirit moved just centimetres despite the fact that its wheels had rotated enough to move it about 10 metres away. Mission managers then stopped trying to drive the rover, whose wheels had already become buried halfway into the loose soil.
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John Assam
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[doublehelix]

How important do you think NASA is currently? How important do you think it is for NASA and other space agencies to develop technology so that humans can colonize other planets? Do you find it inevitable that humans will eventually destroy the Earth through war?

[drwayne]

nesabelle,,

Welcome to the forum.

It is not appropriate to add a post to an existing thread that is not really related to the existing
topic, and is intended to start a discussion that is not related to the specifics of that topic.
(i.e. this thread is about a specific task that is being done by NASA, a series of questions about
NASA's future and mankinds, while important, is not on topic)

drwayne
Forum Moderator

[Robert32645]

Seems to me that future rovers should include a wench for those times when wheels are useless.

[Memitim]

Seems to me that future rovers should include a wench for those times when wheels are useless.

Ummmmm..... the "wench" would probably not survive the atmosphere of Mars but may be nice to look at. Not to mention, Earth may finally have some competition in the Miss Universe pageant by sending a "wench" to Mars. And remember, Donald Trump runs the competition, and the effects of the Martian atmosphere on his hair are, at this time, unknown.