The five wheels that still rotate on NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Spirit have been slipping severely in soft soil during recent attempts to drive, sinking the wheels about halfway into the ground.

Even though NASA's Mars rover Spirit has been trapped in the sand for months, the robot has still managed to report new facts about the red planet — all by just spinning its wheels. These findings ...

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) engineers plan to continue diagnosis of what appears to be a seized up wheel on the already stranded Mars rover Spirit. The new problems with the right hand side ...

After more than six years touring the Red Planet, the spunky little research rover may finally have met its nemesis: a sand trap. Jennifer Guevin was a managing editor at CNET, overseeing the ...

A truly all-terrain rover on the moon or Mars may need to put a little wiggle in its walk. Wheeled rovers have trouble crossing the soft soil that covers large swaths of lunar and Martian terrain.

After six years of unprecedented exploration of the Red Planet, NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Spirit no longer will be a fully mobile robot. NASA has designated the once-roving scientific explorer a ...

The long-crippled right-front wheel of NASA's beleaguered Mars rover Spirit surprised mission managers by spinning for the first time in three years last week. NASA engineers decided to try switching ...

When Spirit dropped through the thin Martian air and bounced to a stop inside Gusev Crater, it did more than survive a ...

The Spirit rover landed on Mars on Jan. 4, 2004. Like its twin, Opportunity, Spirit was assigned an initial mission of only ...