Nasa loses contact with Mars rover
Nasa’s Spirit rover has not transmitted data from the surface of Mars for more than 24 hours, alarmed mission controllers said tonight.
The US space agency last heard from Spirit early on Wednesday. Since then, it has returned just random, meaningless data – and only then sporadically, scientists said.
Initially, the scientists said they believed weather problems on Earth caused the glitch. They now said they believe the rover was experiencing hardware or software problems.
“This is a serious problem. This is an extremely serious anomaly,” project manager Pete Theisinger said.
Spirit is one half of a €645.6m mission. Its twin, Opportunity, is scheduled to land on Mars on Saturday.
