Sun, Jan 25, 2004
Spirit Sends Back Self-Diagnostic Data
Any doctor will tell you that one of the best sources of
information on a sick patient is the patient himself. That's
certainly true for NASA's ailing Mars rover Spirit.
Just before noon on Friday, the rover, which has been in "safe"
mode since Wednesday, sent to the orbiting Mars Odyssey probe a
surprise burst of information, including data on its power
subsystem. That's heady stuff for engineers at the Jet Propulsion
Lab in Pasadena (CA). The rover sent 73 megabits of information in
all.
The transmission was interesting, since JPL sent Spirit a
command to "sleep," which it seems as if Spirit totally ignored.
JPL has said Spirit's flight software just isn't working right, in
spite of commands to reboot the probe's system at least 60
times.
JPL scientists think the little rover with its bean stalk camera
platform may have simply been overtaxed -- given too much to do in
too short a period of time. But, accenting the positive, JPL says
it can at least communicate to some degree with the rover.
"We believe, based on everything we know now, we can sustain the
current state of the spacecraft from a health standpoint for an
indefinite amount of time," Peter Theisinger, rover project
manager, said. That will give engineers time to work on the
problem.
Spirit's problems couldn't have come at a worse time. Its twin,
Opportunity, was scheduled to land on the other side of the Red
Planet Saturday night in a mirror mission designed to find signs of
ancient life. Theisinger said the chances of a quick fix for Spirit
doesn't appear to be in the offing. It could take days or even
weeks, he said, to diagnose the rover's inability to obey commands
from Earth. Sending it to its room isn't an option.
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