The Spirit rover appears to have some memory and mobility problems. Yes, she's getting old, and it appears she has symptoms of aging similar to humans. On Sunday, during her 1,800th Martian day, or sol, information radioed from Spirit indicated the rover had received its driving commands for the day but had not moved.
That can happen for many reasons, including the rover properly sensing that it is not ready to drive. However, other behavior on Sol 1800 was even more unusual: Spirit apparently did not record the day's main activities into the non-volatile memory, the part of its memory that persists even when power is off. It's almost five years to the day when Spirit had memory problems with her "flash drive," but back then, she was just a youngster.
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