On Sunday, on its 1800th day on the Martian surface, the rover Spirit got disoriented and did not manage to follow the directions it was receiving, while the same day, the activities were not saved to the rover's long-term memory, NASA has informed.

Nevertheless, it seems that beginning Wednesday, the rover has been able to respond to the commands it has been receiving from Earth.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) team operating Spirit has been scheduled to begin testing the rover in order to determine the cause behind its failure to function properly.

Sunday, the rover reported that it had received instructions and directions, yet pictures taken at the beginning and at the end of the day revealed that the Spirit had not moved at all within the day.

Two days later, on Tuesday, engineers attempted to determine the rover’s exact location by pin-pointing the sun with the aid of the Spirit’s camera.

The rover followed the instructions it had been given and located the sun, still not where it had previously anticipated.

JPL team leader Sharon Laubach stated that they did not yet have a good explanation for why the rover had been encountering those problems and what had caused the glitches.

For the time being, the theories that have been presented say that the rover's electronics might have been damaged by a cosmic ray.

Mars Rovers project director John Callas stated that the rover had recovered and that it was working properly, being responsive to commands coming from the ground.