Spirit's New Mission

Well the Spirit Rover on Mars is going to be entering a new phase in it's Mars exploration. On Jan 26th NASA decided to forgo any further attempts to Free Spirit from the sand trap it has become trapped in and convert it's scientific experiments into a stationary test platform. Efforts in the next few months will be focused on bettering Spirits solar panel angle so the rover can survive the winter that starts in May. The mission managers are excited about the chance to do some different experiments on a stationary rover, but this certainly changes Spirits chances for survival. I hope they can drive rover back up the slope behind it enough to get the panels aligned enough so that Spirit can survive for a long time.