In an attempt to revive fading batteries, NASA temporarily shut down its Mars
Pathfinder lander for two days last week. Engineers managed to trickle-charge
the batteries from the lander鈥檚 solar panels. 鈥淲e鈥檇 like to stay alive as long
as possible,鈥� says Matthew Golumbek, project scientist at the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory in Pasadena.
The Sojourner rover has run mainly on solar power, so its non-rechargeable
batteries were still at more than two-thirds of their capacity as New
Scientist went to press.
