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NASA mission controllers have not heard from the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit since March 22,
and the rover is facing its toughest challenge yet -- trying to survive the harsh Martian winter.
The rover team anticipated Spirit would go into a low-power "hibernation" mode since the rover was
not able to get to a favorable slope for its fourth Martian winter, which runs from May through November.
The low angle of sunlight during these months limits the power generated from the Spirit's solar panels.
During hibernation, the rover suspends communications and other activities so available
energy can be used to recharge and heat batteries, and to keep the mission clock running.
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It's been in hibernation or frozen. We don't know and we're now coming into more and more sunlight so
Spirit should be building its batteries and maybe will have the capability to talk to us.
It's also seeing the coldest temperatures it's ever seen in its whole lifetime
in the six-plus years it's been on Mars.
So when you get something really, really cold, things might break.
And so we're not sure, when it starts building up its power again
-- and, in theory, would have enough power to communicate back with us --
we're not sure if everything survived.
Over the next six months plus, we're going to be listening and hoping that Spirit revives,
gets enough energy and is able to communicate with us.
There's science for it to do without even having to get out of the hole that it's in
and we're just hopeful that it survived the winter and can build up enough power to talk to us.