It’s been more than a year since NASA’s Mars rover Spirit last contacted Earth, and the odds that the immobilized robot will ever wake up get smaller by the day. Still, NASA engineers have more things to try before they give up all hope.Spirit’s operators had been hoping that...

Hopes for reviving NASA’s Spirit Mars rover dimmed further with passage last week of the point at which the rover’s locale received its maximum sunshine for the Martian year. The rover team has tried to contact Spirit for months with strategies based on the possibility that...

Nine months after last hearing from the Mars rover Spirit, NASA is stepping up efforts to regain communications with the rover before spring ends on southern Mars in mid-March. Spirit landed on Mars Jan. 4, 2004 (Universal Time; Jan. 3, Pacific Time) for a mission designed to last for three...