The Spirit Mars rover may be stuck in the dirt--but that doesn't mean it can't still do some real work out there. Space.com reports that the rover is busy examining its surroundings, a "colorful, layered region" called Troy. It's situated next to a low plateau about two miles from where the rover first landed in 2004.

Plus, sometimes you just get lucky: one of the rover's wheel's dug into the layers of soil, exposing more material to study.

"By serendipity, Troy is one of the most interesting places Spirit has been," said Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis. Arvidson is deputy principal investigator for the science payloads on Spirit and its twin rover, Opportunity, in the article. "We are able here to study each layer, each different color of the interesting soils exposed by the wheels."

Not all will be easy, though. "Some disturbed material cascaded down, evidence of the looseness that will be a challenge for getting Spirit out," Arvidson added. "But at the edge of the disturbed patch, the soil is cohesive enough to hold its shape as a steep cross-section."

In the meantime, back on Earth, the JPL rover team have developed a soil mix for testing purposes that's similar to what the rover is currently stuck in, the report said. The soil combines diatomaceous earth, powdered clay and play sand; another crew is busy making several tons (!) worth of it for more emergency maneuver testing here.