More bad bad news. Just two days ago Phoenix Mars Lander sent his last words, and NASA announced the end of the mission because of a storm that covered its solar panels with Martian dust. Today, we have learnt that the Mars Spirit rover may be dying too because exactly the same problem. In fact, according to Bruce Banerdt—the mission manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and part-time Hulk impersonator—he may be dead already: This is a very dangerous time. If we don't hear from it on Thursday, we'll be extremely concerned. The culprit, again: A sudden dust storm over the Martian equatorial plains. This storm has covered the solar panels during the last days and, as a result, the Mars Spirit only produced 89 watt-hours last weekend. This is half the amount it needs to keep functioning. Scientists at the JPL have turned off heating for many instruments in the hope that the rover's batteries won't be completely depleted.

The arrival of spring in southern Mars is reviving NASA's two venerable Mars rovers as deepening autumn in the arctic north slowly freezes the Phoenix lander. After hibernating for the winter on the northern edge of a plateau called Home Plate, the Spirit rover moved uphill in October to collect more sunlight. On the other side of the planet, the Opportunity rover, which climbed out of a large crater called Victoria at the end of August, has completed the first month of a 12-kilometre trek towards an even bigger crater called Endeavour. That journey is expected to take more than two years. Designed to last only 90 days, the two rovers have survived for nearly five years on the Red Planet. Both are showing their age, but Jake Matijevic, chief of rover engineering at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, says they still are doing fine.

NASA's Opportunity rover is slowly but surely hauling itself out of a vast Martian crater after nearly a year plumbing the interior for secrets of the Red Planet's ancient past. Opportunity will take the same route it used to enter Victoria Crater on Sept. 11, 2007, after a year of scouting from the rim. Engineers want the rover to make a graceful exit after seeing an electric current spike in its left front wheel — a reminder of a similar spike that occurred when its robotic twin Spirit lost use of a front right wheel in 2006. "If Opportunity were driving with only five wheels, like Spirit, it probably would never get out of Victoria Crater," said Bill Nelson, a rover mission manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "We also know from experience with Spirit that if Opportunity were to lose the use of a wheel after it is out on the level ground, mobility should not be a problem."

A new analysis of Martian soil data led by University of California, Berkeley, geoscientists suggests that there was once enough water in the planet's atmosphere for a light drizzle or dew to hit the ground, leaving tell-tale signs of its interaction with the planet's surface. The study's conclusion breaks from the more dominant view that the liquid water that once existed during the red planet's infancy came mainly in the form of upwelling groundwater rather than rain. To come up with their conclusions, the UC Berkeley-led researchers used published measurements of soil from Mars that were taken by various NASA missions: Viking 1, Viking 2, Pathfinder, Spirit and Opportunity. These five missions provided information on soil from widely distant sites surveyed between 1976 and 2006.

That possible impact of an asteroid on Mars at the end of January would be quite a show for the orbiters and rovers now on duty at the red planet. I asked Steve Squyres - lead scientist of the Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers at Cornell — what he thought might be observable by the robots - at that time, in their fourth year of operations. “If an impact takes place, the most likely thing for us to observe would be dust that has been lofted into the atmosphere by the impact event and then carried over the rover sites by wind,” Squyres said. “So if there is an impact, we’ll increase our monitoring of dust in the atmosphere to see if we can observe any effects.”

NASA's Opportunity rover has been crippled and blinded by problems with two of its most important instruments. The agency has suspended work involving the rover's rock grinding tool and its infrared spectrometer while engineers try to work out a fix. The problems are the latest in a long line of failures that have begun to plague both rovers as they age. Opportunity and its twin, Spirit, were designed to last just 90 days. But they have been driving around the Red Planet for nearly 4 years, having landed in January 2004.

The Mars Exploration Rovers have weathered two drab winters on the Martian surface, and mission managers are already looking ahead to yet a third chilly season. All this from a mission that was only designed to last 90 days. The Spirit rover is searching for a spot to stick it out during the upcoming Martian winter, which will last from March 2008 through October 2008, according to a statement from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Although Mars has a tilt similar to Earth's, Martian seasons last longer because the planet takes almost twice as long to circle the Sun—almost 687 Earth days.

After surviving near fatal dust storms on Mars, NASA's Opportunity rover is gearing up for its long-awaited trek inside an expansive crater on the red planet's surface. Opportunity could begin descending down into Mars' giant Victoria Crater by Sept. 11 after spending two months hunkered down to wait out sunlight-blotting storms that nearly starved the solar-powered rover and its robotic twin, Spirit. The rover spent this week rolling ever closer to entry point into Victoria Crater. "Opportunity might be ready for that first 'toe dip' into the crater as early as next week," said John Callas, project manager for the Mars rover mission at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, in a Friday statement.

Rover engineers are growing increasingly concerned about the temperature of vital electronics on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity while the rover stays nearly inactive due to a series of dust storms that has lasted for more than a month. Dust in the atmosphere and dust settling onto Opportunity's solar panels challenges the ability of the solar panels to convert sunlight into enough electricity to supply the rover's needs. The most recent communication from Opportunity, received Monday, July 30, indicates that sunlight over the rover's Meridiani Planum location remains only slightly less obscured than during the dustiest days Opportunity survived in mid-July. With dust now accumulating on the solar panels, the rover is producing barely as much energy as it is using in a very-low-power regimen it has been following since July 18, 2007.

The twin rovers on Mars are in good shape today despite widespread dust storms that worsened last week and threatened to cut off solar power to the robotic explorers. Steve Squyres of Cornell University, the lead scientist for the Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) project, said that both Spirit and Opportunity are in "excellent shape" based on a radio transmission received this morning. "Both came through the weekend beautifully," Squyres said in a telephone interview. "They were both power positive over the weekend, meaning they were generating more power than they were consuming." The amount of sunlight penetrating the dust-choked martian atmosphere has increased slightly in recent days, and the batteries of both rovers are fully charged, said Michael Meyer, lead scientist for the Mars Explorations Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.

A major dust storm on Mars has worsened and is causing the Mars Exploration Rovers to lose power. Opportunity's highly anticipated and risky entry into Victoria Crater is delayed for at least several days, NASA announced. The regional storm, first reported by SPACE.com, is the most severe to hit the rovers since they began exploring Mars in January 2004. Already last week it was thousands of miles wide. At first, scientists did not expect it to affect rover operations. But dust from the storm is partly blocking sunlight, which the rovers need in order to recharge their batteries via their solar panels. Opportunity's operations were scaled back June 30 to conserve power, according to the statement. "The storm is affecting both rovers and reducing the power levels on Opportunity," said John Callas, Mars Exploration Rover project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "We are keeping an eye on this as we go forward, but our entry into Victoria Crater will be delayed until no sooner than July 13."

The strongest evidence yet that ancient Mars was much wetter than it is now has been unearthed by NASA's Spirit rover. A patch of Martian soil kicked up and analyzed by Spirit appears to be rich in silica, which suggests it would have required water to produce. Chemical analysis performed by the rover's robotic arm-mounted science instruments measured a composition of about 90 percent pure silica -- a material commonly found in quartz on Earth -- for the bit of Martian dirt, said mission scientists, who first heard of the find during a teleconference. "You could hear people gasp in astonishment," said Steve Squyres, principal investigator for NASA's twin Spirit and Opportunity rovers at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. "This is a remarkable discovery."

NASA’s Spirit rover hit the 1,000-Martian day of its mission on the red planet Thursday, but the mission continues for the hardy robot. To celebrate the Martian milestone, rover mission managers released the McMurdo panorama [image], a mosaic of some 1,449 individual images taken by Spirit’s panoramic camera. “It has been a surprise and delight to see the vehicle survive as long as it has,” Jake Mapijevic, engineering team chief for NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission. “We had anticipated a much shorter mission.” More than 10 times shorter, in fact.

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientists overseeing the ongoing Mars Exploration Rover Mission said Monday that the Spirit's latest transmissions could indicate a growing resentment of the Red Planet. "Spirit has been displaying some anomalous behavior," said Project Manager John Callas, who noted the rover's unsuccessful attempts to flip itself over and otherwise damage its scientific instruments. "And the thousand or so daily messages of 'STILL NO WATER' really point to a crisis of purpose." The "robot geologist," as NASA describes Spirit, has been operating independently for over 990 Martian sols—nearly the equivalent of three Earth years. However, scientists estimate that, in recent weeks, Spirit has been functioning on the level of a rover who has been on Mars for approximately 6,160 sols.

NASA’s newest Mars orbiter has spied the plucky rover Opportunity perched at the rim of the red planet’s massive Victoria Crater as both vehicles explore the fourth planet from the Sun. Appearing almost as a shiny boulder, Opportunity’s lumpy outline and its camera mast shadow can easily be seen in a high-resolution image of Victoria Crater taken by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and released by the space agency on Friday. “It is so good to see that rover again,” said Steve Squyres, the lead Mars Exploration Rover scientist from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, during a press briefing. “I’ve got to say that image with that little rover 200 million miles away, parked at the top of that cliff, that’s just one of the most evocative images I’ve ever seen in the planetary program…it’s just beautiful.”