Spirit communication lost!

Peterson, David wrote:

I was just thinking... and came up with a possible theory of what
happened to Spirit. (though very doubtful I'm correct)

First a few facts I put together...
1) The last communication session on the High Gain Antenna (HGA)
didn't work real well. They said the data was ratty and blamed it on
storms in Australia and possible DSN pointing errors. (I think they
used the HGA, its not 100% clear though)

I think what they meant was that they sent the commands from Canberra,
got the "beep" signal that they were received, but the Rover didn't
report the data later. When that occurred they hypothesized that the
commands that were *sent* were garbled due to the weak signal through
the storm. But that turned out to be an incorrect hypothesis.

2) The only mechanical device scheduled to be moved on Spirit during
the time the anomaly occurred was the HGA.

Are you sure about that? I may have missed that part of the press
conference. I suppose the HGA is as good a villain as any, given it did
have a mostly unexplained glitch.

--
Greg Crinklaw
Astronomical Software Developer
Cloudcroft, New Mexico, USA (33N, 106W, 2700m)

SkyTools Software for the Observer:
http://www.skyhound.com/cs.html

Skyhound Observing Pages:
http://www.skyhound.com/sh/skyhound.html

Greg Crinklaw writes:
Are you sure about that? I may have missed that part of the press
conference. I suppose the HGA is as good a villain as any, given it did
have a mostly unexplained glitch.

Its more likely a software problem. The first thing that came to my mind
was that they ran out of "disk space". The spirit probably has a memory
disk rather than a real hard drive. Supposedly as they take these pictures
and successfully download them they later command the spirit to delete the
files.

I can just picture the "debug" file system code still left on which doesn't
actually delete the file but simply marks it as deleted :-) Eventually
there would be no free space on the spirit's file system. This would cause
all kinds of weirdness as it does on earth based systems.

So if opportunity lands and takes enough pictures with the pancam then
maybe it will run into the same problem.

Later

Mark Hittinger

Oh Oh...

The garbled message that came back from the Rover mentioned something about
a bank account and a Government Official in Nigeria.

cheers Peter


"Anthony Ayiomamitis" wrote in message
...
Folks,

I just received a news flash from the Space Flight Now web site
(run by Astronomy Now Magazine) and it seems to be official that
communication HAS been lost.

We have the proposed landing of Opportunity on the weekend and,
hopefully, Spirit will be back in action by then so that we can enjoy
transmissions from both rovers.

Anthony.

Alan the Horse wrote:

On Thu, 22 Jan 2004 23:19:51 +0200, Anthony Ayiomamitis
wrote:



If I were you I'd find another news source less likely to indulge in
hyperbole, or did you add that yourself...


Let's try CNN ...

Home Page: "NASA can't communicate with Mars Spirit rover" ....
http://www.cnn.com/
Follow-up link: "NASA unable to comminicate with Mars rover" ...
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/0...act/index.html


Alan,

Again,

Again, I have the news alert I received from them with the title I
mentioned in my previous message. Would you like me to email it to you?
The subject heading of the bulletin in my mailbox is "NEWSFLASH: Contact
lost with Spirit Mars Rover".

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/status.html

did NOT announce "Spirit communication lost!" as you have asserted.
You posted a misrepresentation of their coverage, and then went out

I did not misrepresent anything .... I have their news bulletin!

and grabbed a sensationalist CNN headline to back up your false
assertion. Bad monkey.

Before making accusations, trying reading! It is SpaceFlight Now who
used "NEWSFLASH: Contact lost with Spirit Mars Rover" along with similar
headlines from CNN and MSN.

The latest word from NASA, as reported on Space Flight Now, is ""We
are cautiously encouraged," JPL director Charles Elachi said...."


Also check the SpaceFlight Now bulletin on their web site at 1750 GMT
..... they state "After a day of troubleshooting, engineers have not yet
been able to restore communications with the Spirit rover, which stopped
beaming back science and engineering data Wednesday." What do you think
"not been able to restore communications" mean?????

Anthony.

"Mark Hittinger" wrote in message
...
Greg Crinklaw writes:
Are you sure about that? I may have missed that part of the press
conference. I suppose the HGA is as good a villain as any, given it did
have a mostly unexplained glitch.

Its more likely a software problem. The first thing that came to my mind
was that they ran out of "disk space". The spirit probably has a memory
disk rather than a real hard drive. Supposedly as they take these
pictures
and successfully download them they later command the spirit to delete the
files.

I can just picture the "debug" file system code still left on which
doesn't
actually delete the file but simply marks it as deleted :-) Eventually
there would be no free space on the spirit's file system. This would
cause
all kinds of weirdness as it does on earth based systems.

So if opportunity lands and takes enough pictures with the pancam then
maybe it will run into the same problem.

But surely they will have some sort of uncorruptible boot kernel in ROM that
allows them to reboot the system and clear the memory.

Maybe they have but the "reset" isn't working?

- Michael

John wrote:

Can't read your message. Try again. I believe the Martians got it.

Not really, there is still some form of communication as some would
assert. :-)

Anthony.

"Anthony Ayiomamitis" wrote in message
...


******

************************************************ **********************
************************************************ *****************
****************************

************************************************ **********************
************************************************ **********************
*******************************

********

Peter,

Does this make SPAM universal or, at least, extra-terrestrial? :-)

Anthony.

peter berrett wrote:

Oh Oh...

The garbled message that came back from the Rover mentioned something about
a bank account and a Government Official in Nigeria.

cheers Peter


"Anthony Ayiomamitis" wrote in message
...


Folks,

I just received a news flash from the Space Flight Now web site
(run by Astronomy Now Magazine) and it seems to be official that
communication HAS been lost.

We have the proposed landing of Opportunity on the weekend and,
hopefully, Spirit will be back in action by then so that we can enjoy
transmissions from both rovers.

Anthony.

"Michael" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:GOVPb.3962$oj2.491@edtnps89...
Martians just don't want to give up secrets.

Anyway, it is always a mystery when one moment
it's doing all it should and is beaming back
good health then all of a sudden POOF. Didn't they
test this thing in extreme cold in some JPL refrigerator
over a long period of time?

How do you expect them to do that? At Mars'
distance from the sun its absolute temperature
can go down to ~418 °C: cf "The cause of the
Absolute Zero Point" in
http://www.paf.li/perceptions.htm#_Toc2338356.

Even further to that, however, the influence of a
planet's variable gravitational weight on different
substances (as it can be measured relating to
earth, _eg_, in
http://www.paf.li/gravitation_experiment.htm)
has never been considered (let alone evaluated!)
experimentally before designing any of the Mars
failures.

The basic problem remains, of course, the rather
stupid conceit about being able to describe nature
by quantification, & thus loosing all qualities of
the solar system's real environment.

"Marx @ www.paf.li" wrote in message
...
"Michael" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:GOVPb.3962$oj2.491@edtnps89...
Martians just don't want to give up secrets.

Anyway, it is always a mystery when one moment
it's doing all it should and is beaming back
good health then all of a sudden POOF. Didn't they
test this thing in extreme cold in some JPL refrigerator
over a long period of time?

How do you expect them to do that? At Mars'
distance from the sun its absolute temperature
can go down to ~418 °C: cf "The cause of the
Absolute Zero Point" in
http://www.paf.li/perceptions.htm#_Toc2338356.

Even further to that, however, the influence of a
planet's variable gravitational weight on different
substances (as it can be measured relating to
earth, _eg_, in
http://www.paf.li/gravitation_experiment.htm)
has never been considered (let alone evaluated!)
experimentally before designing any of the Mars
failures.

The basic problem remains, of course, the rather
stupid conceit about being able to describe nature
by quantification, & thus loosing all qualities of
the solar system's real environment.



The internet is a useful tool, full of good resources, but it's also full of
some complete crap. You need to learn to distinguish the good from the bad.

Oh sorry, I see from your e-mail address that's your site.
Never mind, keep taking the pills

D

"Dave" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
...

"Marx @ www.paf.li" wrote in message
...
"Michael" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:GOVPb.3962$oj2.491@edtnps89...
Martians just don't want to give up secrets.

Anyway, it is always a mystery when one moment
it's doing all it should and is beaming back
good health then all of a sudden POOF. Didn't they
test this thing in extreme cold in some JPL refrigerator
over a long period of time?

How do you expect them to do that? At Mars'
distance from the sun its absolute temperature
can go down to ~418 °C: cf "The cause of the
Absolute Zero Point" in
http://www.paf.li/perceptions.htm#_Toc2338356.

Even further to that, however, the influence of a
planet's variable gravitational weight on different
substances (as it can be measured relating to
earth, _eg_, in
http://www.paf.li/gravitation_experiment.htm)
has never been considered (let alone evaluated!)
experimentally before designing any of the Mars
failures.

The basic problem remains, of course, the rather
stupid conceit about being able to describe nature
by quantification, & thus loosing all qualities of
the solar system's real environment.

The internet is a useful tool, full of good resources,
but it's also full of some complete crap. You need
to learn to distinguish the good from the bad.

You're right: 1 part in a million (that's what I say above)
is fine & useful, everything else obviously is crap (that's
the s.S [sci.Stupid] stuff you must have in mind).

Oh sorry, I see from your e-mail address that's
your site. Never mind, keep taking the pills

A typically helpless s.S argument against what I
say above, _ie_ none at all.