NASA detects communication from too-quiet Mars rover

Houston Comical ^ | 1/23/04 | Mark Carreau and AP Staff

[The_Victor]

NASA's Spirit rover communicated with Earth in a signal detected by NASA's Deep Space Network antenna complex near Madrid, Spain, at about 6:30 a.m. CST.

The signal came as anxious NASA engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., tried to communicate with the rover today and to diagnose and possibly patch up their ailing robotic patient after two days without receiving any significant data.

"We know we have a very serious anomaly on the vehicle," said NASA's Pete Theisinger, the Mars Rover project manager. "Our ability to determine exactly what has happened has been limited by our inability to receive telemetry (communications)."

This morning's signal lasted 10 minutes during a communication window of about 90 minutes.

Mission controllers plan to send commands to Spirit seeking additional data today.

Engineers had hoped Spirit would manage to send some engineering data, which can be used to assess the health of the spacecraft, pinpoint any problems and allow NASA to begin working on a potential fix or fixes. Officials had said the next best opportunity for actual data to come from the rover was between 5 and 11 a.m. today.

Since Wednesday, its 19th day on Mars, the Spirit has sent back to Earth only meaningless radio noise or simple beeps acknowledging receipt of commands.

Among the possible problems: a corruption of its software or computer memory. If the software is awry, NASA can fix it from Earth by beaming patches across more than 100 million miles of space or by rebooting the rover's computer. But if the problem lies with the rover's hardware, the situation would be far more grave -- perhaps beyond repair.

Experts sifted through other possible explanations -- a power loss or difficulties in the control computer in its communications gear.

Baffled scientists struggled to pinpoint the trouble.

"It is precisely like trying to diagnose a patient with different symptoms that don't corroborate," said Firouz Naderi, manager of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory Mars exploration program.

The timing of the failure was especially worrisome because Spirit's twin rover, Opportunity, is barreling toward a landing on the other side of the planet late Saturday. The two events threatened to strain the manpower available to manage Opportunity's risky landing and attempt to recover Spirit.

With Opportunity fast approaching Mars, managers faced the prospect of setting Spirit's problems aside until after Saturday's landing. However, if the difficulties could be traced to a software problem, Theisinger was more confident experts could address the problem quickly.

"If this problem on Spirit is somehow a software corruption or a memory corruption issue reflected in software and not a serious power fault, then I think Spirit can go for quite a long time and we can pick up the pieces again," said Theisinger.

"If on the other hand we have some kind of major power fault, that has life-limiting characteristics of course. It may also be more difficult to recover from that."

Spirit relies on solar arrays to convert sunlight into electricity for its operations. The power consumption is reduced during the Martian night when the spacecraft goes into an electronic slumber that is interrupted each morning with commands from Earth containing instructions for the day's work.

Spirit's response early Thursday to a command -- it sent some beeps -- offered some optimism to flight controllers that the spacecraft was producing electricity and that its computer and its communications equipment were working.

But the lack of more data left the experts guessing and troubleshooting through the night. Theisinger said mission managers were weighing options before attempting to send further significant sets of instructions for the 383-pound, six-wheeled rover.

Engineers did not believe that weather on Mars caused the problem, although winds sweep through the crater where the rover landed.

Spirit descended into Gusev Crater late on Jan. 3, and rolled off its lander last week to begin testing soil and rock samples for any evidence that life-sustaining water filled or flowed through the large depression.

Spirit is parked close to the lander near a football-size rock that has been christened Adirondack. The last instructions beamed to Spirit, early Wednesday, were for the rover to examine the mineral composition of the stone and to turn on a drilling tool.

Mars has proved a difficult but compelling target for scientists. Spirit was only the fourth of 13 spacecraft to complete the seven-month journey successfully over the past 34 years.

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[LibertarianInExile]

They sent out a work order and a repairman already...but he had some problems working under such pressure.

[LibertarianInExile]

Shhhhhh! We're having EuroFrog calculate the exchange rates for the next increment of national debt payments due to foreign banks. Don't confuse him! :)

[JasonC]

"to turn on a drilling tool"

Um OK, first I'd heard of that. Suggests things, doesn't it? Drill turns on, instant glitch. Suggests hardware. Drill in contact with rock, rock chips fly, rock chips hit things, things stop working.

They say they are only getting "meaningless radio noise" or the safe mode beep. Suggests a problem with the transmitter. What is the layout of this? Anybody got a diagram?

[JasonC]

Another thread says, more specifically, that they were trying to calibrate the motors in the arm when the failure occurred. Which doesn't suggest bits of flying rock, but still does suggest a possible hardware problem. Perhaps all the heating and cooling cycles the thing has been through cracked something that failed when one motor was used at above a certain speed, or something similar. It sounds like the software has been rebooting over and over, but transmission is clear for limited periods, suggesting no serious damage to the actual transmitter or antennae.

[EuroFrog]

Ya ya ya, I made a mistake, sue me.

By the way, Im a she, not a he.

[2nd Amendment]

This has got to be a Democratic rover . . won't work and still on the government payroll!

[LibertarianInExile]

Sorry, I caught that after I saw another of your posts...but it was too late. I made a mistake, sue me. :)

[The_Victor]

Even the most minute mistakes do not go unnoticed on this forum. I suspect the new "Spell" button has cut the post volume significantly. We can't pick on each other's spelling errors as much anymore. Unless JimRob has gone WICCA, and every time we hit "Spell" it casts a hex on the democRATs.

[EuroFrog]

Hexes on the democrats wouldn't be such a bad thing....Shoot, just sit back and watch them hex themselves every time they open their mouths.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

Spirit was only the fourth of 13 spacecraft to complete the seven-month journey successfully over the past 34 years.

I've gone stupid again. I count 2 Viking landers, the 2 current orbiters, the Carl Sagan station, a couple of Mariners and the European orbiter. Where does 4 come from????

[hosepipe]

INPUT......need INPUT....