After seven years of working on the surface of Mars, NASA's Mars rover Opportunity has been upgraded to allow it to make some of its own decisions.

After six years roaming across and working on Mars, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit has been deemed permanently stuck in dirt on the planet's surface.

NASA says it is narrowing a short list of things its scientists can to extricate its stuck Mars Spirit rover.

NASA's long running Mars rover is stuck in a sand trap – a situation the space agency would like to fix. So NASA will begin what it called the long process of extricating Spirit by sending commands that could free the rover.