27 Jan 2010

Robot vehicle to stay stuck on Mars

3:04 pm on 27 January 2010

NASA says it has given up trying to free its Spirit Rover, which has been stuck in soft mud on Mars since last year.

The American space agency says all efforts to free the robot vehicle have failed and it will now be a static science station.

The rover landed on Mars six years ago and has taken thousands of images of the planet's surface.

NASA says Spirit is not dead, it has just reached another phase of its long life.