Mars is full of surprises, and so, it seems, is the Mars rover, Spirit.
Spirit's right front wheel stopped working in 2006, due to an open electrical circuit, and engineers assumed it was lost for good. Since then, as a consequence, Spirit has been driven around Mars in reverse. Last week, however, attempting to extricate the rover from the deep sand that's had it trapped for months, engineers took a shot and tried to use the dead wheel. It spun.
It didn't spin easily, and it didn't get the rover unstuck, and it has since stopped spinning, but the wheel did respond to commands. Team members are allowing publicly that they may never get Spirit moving again, but the unfrozen wheel is a reminder that strange things can happen on the Red Planet.
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