The Mars rover Spirit missed its scheduled communication with Earth this week. NASA engineers think the rover may have gone into hibernation mode to conserve power as it heads into winter. They note that the power reserves in the rover's batteries have been declining over several weeks and theorize the power may have reached the level at which Spirit's computer would shut down virtually every system in an attempt to keep the core system functioning until the power in the batteries can be restored.
The question is whether contact with Spirit will ever be restored. After six demanding years on Mars for a vehicle that originally had only a 90-day mission, the brutal Martian winter may finally be too much. We will need to wait several months to find out.
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