SCI/TECH: NASA regains contact with Spirit.

After two worrisome days in the NASA control room we have learned that contacts between the agency and the probe have resumed as normally, the Mars rover Spirit sent data Friday morning to its NASA flight team in a communications session lasting 20 minutes, the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said. However, a serious hardware malfunction likely remains, that hampers the remainer of the mission.

The craft, Spirit, has sent back little more than beeps and sporadic data bursts since Wednesday, forcing NASA engineers to scramble for answers at an inopportune time: an identical robot ship is poised to land on the other side of Mars on Saturday night or Sunday morning.

Since Wednesday, NASA scientists had received a basic communication tone from the Spirit rover indicating it was alive, but the solid flows of data that marked its first 18 days on Mars stopped, said deputy project manager Richard Cook.

www.CNN.com



[Edited on 23-1-2004 by SkepticOverlord]

[Edited on 24-1-2004 by SkepticOverlord]

Yeah this is great news. Did they figure out why they lost contact in the first place?

a I am happy now only I hope they gif the rover a bit more rest cause some people on the radio said it was because the power was low.

[Edited on 23-1-2004 by MarkLuitzen]

They're still only getting a transmission tone. It's not sending much useful data and NASA is still describing the situation as 'serious'.

I give up....

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Nasa now says that even though they have contact it could take weeks to fix the problem

story.news.yahoo.com.../ap/20040123/ap_on_sc/mars_rover

New press release timed 6:35 PM says NASA received a big burst of data at ~ noon.

Shortly before noon, controllers were surprised to receive a relay of data from Spirit via the Mars Odyssey orbiter. Spirit sent 73 megabits at a rate of 128 kilobits per second. The transmission included power subsystem engineering data, no science data, and several frames of "fill data." Fill data are sets of intentionally random numbers that do not provide information.

marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov... 040123d.html

Tungsten
www.poweredbysteam.com...

Geeze... martians damaged it when they took it for a joy ride? I thought I told them..... *rambles on*

www.space.com...

I knew that we'd regain contact with Spirit. Opportunity is now closing in fast on Mars, and will land tomorrow.

OUPPORTUNITY: AWSOME!!!! I can't wait! This'll be cool! *yays* Nooo!

SPIRIT:Spirit how could you die? *rushes it to the ER*

It will be interesting to find out what exactly caused the malfunction and if they can really 'fix' it.

Thought there was a command sent to an arm on the rover that was not completed, thus initiating the problem. One would figure if it is software related, they could reprogram or upload software to the rover.

I just read that it is the flash memory of Spirit that is screwed. It has 2 256 meg cards - like camera flash and the problem is with one of them.

By bypassing the flash cards they have partial control again.

Sorry no link - lost it here somewhere...
marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov...

I made a post in RATS under Val's NASA thread related to the flash memories. Gives a little insight, and a link to an article provided by Val.

www.abovetopsecret.com...