Posted by tourdemars to Mars Exploration Rovers at May 9, 2005 02:21 PM

When the Opportunity rover landed on Mars last year, scientists were thrilled that it made a cosmic “hole-in-one” by rolling into a crater. But now the robot is struggling to drive itself out of a sand trap. Time will tell whether it’s up to par for the task. Progress is being made on trying to remove Opportunity from a soft-sand dune that the sporty, six-wheeled utility rover has run itself into at its exploration site: Meridiani Planum.