Good news: the Opportunity Rover has broken free of the Martian sand in which it's been trapped for the last month.
NASA's Opportunity rover has broken free from the Martian sand dune where it had been stuck for more than a month, the mission's top scientist announced Saturday.Posted by Alan at June 4, 2005 06:17 PMIn late April, during a southward trek toward a crater of interest called Erebus, Opportunity's wheels became mired in the crest of a foot-high (30-centimeter-high) sand dune — and mission managers took weeks to plot out a strategy for getting out of the dune. The rover team commanded the machine to reposition its wheels, then go through a series of spins that pushed the rover forward an inch at a time.
Opportunity broke free after making about 3 feet (93 centimeters) of that inch-by-inch progress.