Life on the Road – Trucking News Blog

I’ve always been amazed how easy it is for a truck to get stuck, especially when you’re bobtailing or MT. The eight “drive” wheels can easily be rendered completely useless by snow, sleet, mud, wet grass, sugar sand, dirt and ALIEN SOIL. What? Alien soil? Yup,

NASA’s Mars Rover named the “Spirit” is stuck in Martian soil. About two weeks ago, its wheels dug into space muck, and the rover became immobile. "It’s a light, fluffy material. It’s kind of like flour, and so you can’t get much traction in that," says John Callas of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena CA. Besides getting stuck, the rover’s right front wheel has been broken for years. It has limped along by driving backward, dragging the wheel. And now, another wheel has stopped turning. "There’s some reason to suspect that a rock may be jammed in that wheel. “Callas also thinks “Spirit” may have dug so far down into the dirt that its “belly pan” could be resting on Martian rocks. According to NASA, Spirit remains stationary, pending development of a recovery strategy to free her from the loose, soft terrain.

NASA also reports: “On the ground, work continues on the preparation of the sandbox at JPL to recreate the terrain and conditions of the rover on Mars. A "shoebox" test of a soil simulant, called Bag House dust, will be performed under one wheel of the rover to see if the “simulant” exhibits the characteristics of the soil on Mars. However, testing with the rover at Jet Propulsion Lab is held up due to a computer server disk crash. That server loss is being remedied, but will take some time.”

Sounds like all they need is the other rover also up there to head over to the Spirit’s location (called Home Plate) with an ‘ole fashioned chain. A space service call so to speak. That’s how we do it here on Earth and you don’t need a team of engineers, scientists, managers – no computers and it costs a heck of a lot less. The Mars Rovers project costs us somewhere around a BILLION DOLLARS! Wouldn’t you agree that they should shoot a wrecker similar to one in the picture up to Mars – solar power the thing – to pull these rovers out of the Martian dust. No credit card or Comchek required. I like how NASA says: “Spirit is currently challenged by some very difficult terrain on the west side of Home Plate. The rover encountered very loose, soft material while driving south on its current path.” NO IT’S STUCK! And all truckers know what it feels like to sit there waiting three hours for assistance to arrive.

Photo credits: http://courtneytuttle.com/images/heavy-chain-links-full.jpg, www.legeros.com/…/pivot/entry.php?id=2060, http://www.utahskies.org/image_library/shallowsky/apollo/20040629-MarsroversSpirit.jpg AND information from the following articles was used to develop this post: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104351311 and http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/home/