Just weeks after NASA celebrated the Spirit rover's fifth anniversary on Mars, the robotic explorer suffered a mysterious glitch that caused it to freeze in place for a day. The rover couldn't tell NASA what had gone wrong or even what it did for that stretch of time, and it even lost track of the sun.
"We don't have a good explanation yet for the way Spirit has been acting for the past few days," said JPL team leader Sharon Laubach. "Our next steps will be diagnostic activities" [BBC News].
The glitch came last Sunday, which marked Spirit's 1,800th Martian day, or sol, on the planet. NASA sent the rover its driving directions for the day and Spirit acknowledged receiving them, but then it failed to move.
More strangely, the Spirit had no memory of what it had done for that part of Sol 1800. The rover did not record ...
