NASA"s rover Spirit is stuck and the rover was able to take a picture of its underside. The rover that has far outlasted its original expected lifecycle has found itself high centered on top of a rock.
NASA engineers were able to rotate the microscopic imager to view the underbelly to take the photo shown below. The image is blurry because the imager was designed to take photos of objects at a distance of 6 centimeters (2.4 inches). Despite the fact that the image is out of focus and grainy in nature it does clearly show what the rover is stuck on top of and will hopefully assist in the demounting of the robot.
The Spirit rover landed on Mars on January 4, 2004 and has been exploring the surface ever since that successful landing. The rover has out performed its original intent and was only expected to survive for around 90 days. Five years later the rover finds itself stuck on a rock but still alive.
Engineers are optimistic that they can get the rover off of the stuck rock but being high centered on top of a rock is not easy to get one"s self unstuck. The rover has survived a dust storm and a locked up wheel so a rock shouldn"t be too big of a hurdle for its human counterparts on earth to overcome.