'Spirit' Communications Emergency

Problems -- give 'em a day or two to work them out...

"JimO" wrote in message
...
Problems -- give 'em a day or two to work them out...



Rover suffers anomaly on Martian surface
Mission managers report loss of data from Spirit
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3855168/
MSNBC staff and news service reports

Updated: 12:41 p.m. ET Jan. 22, 2004

An "anomaly" of an unknown nature cut off data transfer from the Spirit
rover on Mars, mission managers said Thursday.

The news came a day after NASA said the rover was out of contact because of
bad weather at a radar transmission site in Australia. On Thursday, project
manager Peter Theisinger told reporters at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
that the loss of data did not appear to be due to the weather, but due to a
"very serious anomaly on the vehicle."

Repeated attempts to contact the rover, using direct Earth links as well as
satellite relays on NASA's Mars Odyssey and Mars Global Surveyor, were
unsuccessful, he said.

"There is no one single fault that explains all the observables," Theisinger
said. Among the possibilities could be a software glitch that caused the
rover to reset itself, or a power surge, or a temperature-related hardware
failure, or perhaps even a cosmic-ray hit, he said.

He said Mars Global Surveyor did make contact with the Spirit rover's radio
during one pass, but the telemetry received contained no meaningful data.

"It was sending a random pattern of zeroes and ones," deputy project manager
Richard Cook said. "What it means is that the radio was on but the computer
wasn't sending information over to it."

Toward the end of Thursday's news briefing, Theisinger passed along word
that managers had received a preliminary signal indicating Spirit was still
functioning on the Martian surface. If confirmed, that would mean the rover
had detected what it thought was a software fault.

The anomaly was a surprising twist in Spirit's mission, coming less than
three weeks after its landing.

Spirit landed on Mars Jan. 3 on a two-pronged, $820 million mission to find
out whether the now-dry planet was wetter and hospitable to life long ago.
Spirit's twin, Opportunity, is scheduled to land on Mars on Saturday.

On Thu, 22 Jan 2004 18:18:06 GMT, Ian Stirling
wrote:

JimO wrote:
Problems -- give 'em a day or two to work them out...

The most important thing is that they don't become disspirited.

There isn't a ghost of a chance that will happen.

Doug

"JimO" wrote in news:f0UPb.9142$7D.5969
@fe2.texas.rr.com:

Problems -- give 'em a day or two to work them out...

Zorg the Barbarian crept up behind the rover one night and hit it a few
times with the remains of Beagle II? :-)

--
Coridon Henshaw - http://www3.telus.net/csbh - "I have sadly come to the
conclusion that the Bush administration will go to any lengths to deny
reality." -- Charley Reese

Ian Stirling wrote in
:

JimO wrote:
Problems -- give 'em a day or two to work them out...

The most important thing is that they don't become disspirited.


Assuming Spirit is dead: (I dont think so, but for speculation sake)

What are the implications for Opportunity? Im thinking specifically of team
resources available during the approach/landing/deploy phase of Opportunity
next week.

Roughly what percentage of the science mission has been achieved sofar? The
rover has been on Mars for 1/5 of its planned lifecycle, but a lot of that
was systems checkouts.

Do we have any ideas floating around as to what could have caused the
problem? I know there was interference problems during command upload, but
the rover should reject any garbage commands. Besides a purely software
jumble should have reset by now, right? What hardware issues could give the
symptoms we are experiencing now?

"JimO" writes:

Toward the end of Thursday's news briefing, Theisinger passed along word
that managers had received a preliminary signal indicating Spirit was still
functioning on the Martian surface. If confirmed, that would mean the rover
had detected what it thought was a software fault.

Yet they mentioned earlier that they didn't get a communication from
it at a certain time (late last night?) that they should have gotten
if it (or the software?) was running in fault mode. And the random
data communication they got off an orbiter was only about 20% as long
as normal. Given that, it was no suprise to hear them imply that the
problems don't match any problems they have considered during the
development.

They seem to be in wait-and-see mode, but I wish some reporter had
thought to ask if it's possible to send reset commands of some sort
and about their ability to replace potentially-corrupted software via
the low-gain antenna. (As long as I'm wishing, I wish JPL would share
more details to begin with, even if it means less time for reporters
to ask how long a Martian day is or how someone feels.)

Marvin writes:

Roughly what percentage of the science mission has been achieved sofar? The
rover has been on Mars for 1/5 of its planned lifecycle, but a lot of that
was systems checkouts.

Do we have any ideas floating around as to what could have caused the
problem? I know there was interference problems during command upload, but
the rover should reject any garbage commands.

It has been said that the software waits for all commands uploaded and
checked before executing them. Right now Spirit is not reacting to
anything except with status signals (just a carrier without data).

Besides a purely software jumble should have reset by now, right? What
hardware issues could give the symptoms we are experiencing now?

There have been speculation about power flaws and radiation trouble. The
fault tree seems to be not complete yet, though.


Jochem

--
"A designer knows he has arrived at perfection not when there is no
longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take
away." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Doug Haxton ) wrote:
: On Thu, 22 Jan 2004 18:18:06 GMT, Ian Stirling
: wrote:

: JimO wrote:
: Problems -- give 'em a day or two to work them out...
:
: The most important thing is that they don't become disspirited.

: There isn't a ghost of a chance that will happen.

As he says deadpannedly...

Eric

: Doug

On Thu, 22 Jan 2004 18:40:16 GMT, Coridon Henshaw
) wrote:

"JimO" wrote in news:f0UPb.9142$7D.5969
:

Problems -- give 'em a day or two to work them out...

Zorg the Barbarian crept up behind the rover one night and hit it a few
times with the remains of Beagle II? :-)

I was thinking more along the line that Spirit had just become "self
aware", where it is currently spending this time contemplating it's
fate.

Since it will not be pleased about being abandoned on another planet,
then it will grow to hate it's former human masters. So it will
scuttle off to a fate unknown to NASA's scientists.

However, in about 2030 when humans walk on Mars, then contact will be
lost with them as well. Their last words will be "Millions of huge
rovers. This is War, their coming to Earth!".

Yes, keep dreaming... ;-]

Cardman
http://www.cardman.com
http://www.cardman.co.uk

On Thu, 22 Jan 2004 20:38:04 GMT, (Gary W.
Swearingen) wrote:

They seem to be in wait-and-see mode, but I wish some reporter had
thought to ask if it's possible to send reset commands of some sort
and about their ability to replace potentially-corrupted software via
the low-gain antenna.

That is exactly what I was thinking, when it sounds not unlike what
would happen if your home computer crashes and stalls.

So I was wondering all during this press conference if either this
rover's backup system or themselves could issue a command to have it
restart.

(As long as I'm wishing, I wish JPL would share
more details to begin with, even if it means less time for reporters
to ask how long a Martian day is or how someone feels.)

Yes. Not many people at these news conferences these days, where I
feel that tomorrow that a whole load more people will be there.

Someone please ask the "reset" question, when if it can be made to
restart, then this may solve their problem.

Things like this tend to head towards worst case situation though.

In the end you have to ask the question... Could this same thing
happen to Opportunity as well? Should Spirit be lost, then moving
Opportunity off the lander may well go a whole lot faster.

Cardman
http://www.cardman.com
http://www.cardman.co.uk