Fine Structure

Spirit, one of two enterprising robots doing their stuff on the surface of Mars, is stuck in a sandpit. In fact, Spirit has been stuck in a particularly sandy patch since mid-June and scientists have been working on a procedure for getting the robot unstuck and on its way to roving again. How does one do this from millions of kilometers away? JPL scientists have used a replica Spirit to plan out roving on the red planet since the two landers started roving around in 2004, and the same replica is being used in a giant sandbox to plan for Spirit's great escape from the pit.

Linked below is WIRED's series of photos about building the Mars-y sandbox for the replica Spirit to escape from. It's an interested experiment in solving problems from a distance and fascinating that we can accurately approximate the conditions for the rover on Earth.