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Rover is going nowhere for now

The Spirit rover will spend another week parked on the spacecraft that brought it to Mars, as cautious engineers work to clear a safe path for the six-wheeled robot to roll off and begin prospecting its rocky surroundings, NASA officials said.

Further complicating the mission, new images from the spacecraft suggest Wednesday that its landing site is not the dry lake bed scientists originally had hoped. That implies the robotic explorer's hunt for geologic evidence that the planet once was a wetter place conducive to life might be more difficult than expected.

The earliest that Spirit will roll onto Mars is Jan. 14, or about three days later than originally planned. Further delays of one or two days remain possible.

That has made mission members eager to get Spirit rolling even more anxious.

"We are champing at the bit to get this puppy off the lander and get driving," said Art Thompson, tactical uplink lead for the $820 million double mission, on Wednesday.

The Mars Exploration Rover project includes a second, identical rover. That rover, Opportunity, is scheduled to arrive on Mars on Jan. 24, or three weeks after Spirit landed.

The Spirit delay gives engineers time to retract portions of the deflated air bags that cushioned the golf cart-sized rover's landing. Two sections of the air bag partially block the ramp that mission members want the rover to follow.

"As soon as we get that air bag out of the way, we're good to go," said Arthur Amador, mission manager for Spirit's fifth Martian day on the surface.

On Wednesday, Spirit was to perform a "lift and tuck operation" to raise the blocked ramp and further draw in the bits of deflated air bag. Thompson said the mission would not be able to announce if the operation was a success until Thursday.

If it fails, Spirit can roll down either of two other ramps. Those maneuvers would require the rover to perform a robotic pirouette, however, to ensure it faced the right direction.

Spirit continues to do science work from its perch above the Martian surface.

Scientists picked Spirit's landing site inside Gusev Crater because they believed the depression once contained a brimming lake -- the type of place that may have been hospitable to life. If that was the case, Spirit should be seeing a flat plain rich in fine-grained sediments, said Ray Arvidson, of Washington University, and the mission's deputy principal scientist.

"That's not what we're looking at," Arvidson said.
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