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PIA12101: Test Rover Sinks into Prepared Soil
While a test rover rolls off a plywood surface into a prepared bed of soft soil, rover team members Colette Lohr (left) and Kim Lichtenberg (center) eye the wheels digging into the soil and Paolo Bellutta enters the next driving command.
 Mission:  Mars Exploration Rover (MER) 
 Spacecraft:  Spirit
 Product Size:  1243 x 928 pixels (w x h) 
 Produced By:  JPL 
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA12101.tif (3.464 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA12101.jpg (136.9 kB)  

Click on the image above to download a moderately sized image in JPEG format (possibly reduced in size from original)

Original Caption Released with Image:

While a test rover rolls off a plywood surface into a prepared bed of soft soil, rover team members Colette Lohr (left) and Kim Lichtenberg (center) eye the wheels digging into the soil and Paolo Bellutta enters the next driving command. The test rover became embedded in the soil during this June 30, 2009, activity, as intended. The test setup simulates the situation that NASA's Mars Rover Spirit faces in a soil patch called "Troy" on Mars.

The team planned a few adjustments to more closely match Spirit's situation, such as placing a rock beneath the test rover, and then intended to begin assessing possible maneuvers for Spirit to use getting free from Troy. The test facility is in the In Situ Instrument Laboratory at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

To see updates on the efforts to free the Spirit rover, visit the JPL Free Spirit website.

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech

Image Addition Date:
2009-06-30