Spirit Sends First Photo Since Troubles Began

Yahoo ^ | Jan 29 2004 | By Robert Roy Britt

[Dog]

Spirit Sends First Photo Since Troubles Began

By Robert Roy Britt Senior Science Writer, SPACE.com

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NASA (news - web sites)'s troubled rover Spirit has sent a new photograph back from Mars. It is the robot's first significant data transmission since its computer went haywire last week.

The image was taken and sent back Wednesday. It was captured by the rover's front hazard avoidance camera and shows the robotic arm extended to a rock previously named Adirondack. Mission managers did not say whether it was an indicator of Spirit's health.

Spirit's science operations halted just as it crawled to the pointy rock and was about to begin drilling into it. The rover's computer rebooted itself more than 100 times over a two-day period and, at first, sent back beeps but no data. Engineers have since determined that the problem appears to involve too many files overloading the onboard computer memory.

A spectrometer, which would identify minerals in the rock, is still placed on Adirondack, as it had been instructed prior to the computer glitch.

"Engineers are working to restore Spirit to working order so that the rover can resume the scientific exploration of its landing area," a NASA statement accompanying the picture said. No other details have been provided about the rover's condition since a Wednesday morning press briefing.

"Right now we're working to get complete control of the vehicle, and we're still not quite there," Jennifer Trosper, Mission Manager for the Mars Exploration Rover program at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said earlier Wednesday. "If we're on the right track, we hope to be back doing some science by early next week. If we're not on the right track, it could take longer than that."

Spirit is in the Gusev Crater on Mars. Its twin, Opportunity, is on the other side of the planet and preparing to roll off its landing pad, possibly as early as Sunday.

The combined mission cost is $820 million and is designed to determine whether Mars was once wetter, possibly with the conditions necessary for life.

[Dog]

Spirit is back..

[Dog]

fyi..

[StriperSniper]

Spirit Sends First Photo Since Troubles Began

...and it is quite ominous...

[Blood of Tyrants]

Well, sort of.

[LRS]

Spirit must have taken the WayBack machine ;)



http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/040126spirit.html

"Then, as we were getting ready to send the next beep command, the vehicle decided to communicate with us in one of its nominal communications windows at which point we got a little bit of data that had very little information in it. In fact, originally we started to decode it and it was from the year 2053 and we thought 'this is not good!' Eventually we found out the data was corrupted, and we were all cheering at that point because there weren't a lot of scenarios that would put us in 2053 on Mars."

[Slicksadick]

Already posted here.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1067557/posts

[Darksheare]

Spirit regains it's senses, sends back image.
Seems to be sitting right where it was last before it barfed it's brains out.

[ryanjb2]

"Engineers have since determined that the problem appears to involve too many files overloading the onboard computer memory."

From what I have read on the NASA website, Spirit has 128 MB of RAM. You think they would have put more on it with RAM being so cheap these days.

[RockyMtnMan]

The RAM is radiation hardened, so is a little more expensive than your average RAM.

[Samwise]

...there weren't a lot of scenarios that would put us in 2053 on Mars.

:^) He needs to read more science fiction.

[the invisib1e hand]

you have made me very angry!

[Coyote]

Engineers have since determined that the problem appears to involve too many files overloading the onboard computer memory.

I just knew it. Spirit's running under Windows.

.

[RockyMtnMan]

More likely Slowlaris since it's using Java, even though Java runs better under windows.

[Professional Engineer]

Engineers have since determined that the problem appears to involve too many files overloading the onboard computer memory.

Ruh Roh! Somebody downloaded some porn and didn't cleanup after themself.

[frithguild]

[DoctorMichael]

Just wait! The memory will fill up again with Penis & Breast Enhancement Ads along with Advanced Degrees for $49.95.

[randog]

Are they really running Java on an embedded system?

[RockyMtnMan]

Not sure if the rover itself has a VM but the ground control software is:

http://news.com.com/2100-1007_3-5142220.html?tag=nefd_top

My lego mindstorm (32k) can be flashed to use a Java VM and the JavaCard technology is ultra low footprint as well. There are a few cell phones that run a VM and I can think of a few other devices that use Java as well.

[Imal]

Abort, Retry, Fail?

[Indie]

the problem appears to involve too many files overloading the onboard computer memory.

Martian kid having a little "fun" with us Earthlings no doubt.