LOS ANGELES - Spirit has always been the unluckier of NASA's twin Mars rovers. Just weeks after landing in a Martian crater in 2004, it went haywire and transmitted gibberish to Earth. Engineers ...

Explore how Mars rover AutoNav and TRN lunar landing technologies advance autonomous spacecraft navigation, enabling self-guided, human-free space missions across Mars, the Moon, and beyond.

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. On January 3, 2004, NASA's Spirit rover landed on Mars! Also known as Mars Exploration Rover 2, this was the first of NASA's twin ...

When a multimillion-dollar extraterrestrial vehicle gets stuck in soft sand or gravel—as did the Mars rover Spirit in 2009—Earth-based engineers take over like a virtual tow truck, issuing a series of ...

The odometer on the Mars rover Spirit has been stuck at 4.8 miles for more than 1 1/2 years and has been incommunicado since March. This double dose of bad luck hangs over the scrappy spacecraft, ...

PASADENA, Calif. - NASA's Spirit rover reached out to Mars on Friday, extending its robotic arm to snap a series of tight close-ups with a combination microscope and camera that reveal the ...

It was a “big deal” for NASA when two so-called Rovers landed safely on Mars. “Spirit” was supposed to be good for just three months and a few hundred yards, but it lasted for 6 years and traveled ...

NASA’s Spirit rover landed on Mars in 2004 and was designed to operate for just 90 days. Instead, it explored the Martian ...

A powerful Manassas-built computer is running the show on Mars. The specialized computer built by BAE Systems in Manassas is guiding NASA's Spirit rover, which is designed to probe the terrain and ...