"Serious anomaly" silences Mars rover Spirit

USA Today (OnLine) ^ | 22 Jan 2004 | Leonard David, SPACE.com

[night reader]

PASADENA, Calif. — Mars Rover officials at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced Thursday that "a serious anomaly" occurred onboard the robot Spirit Wednesday stopping the transmission of direct data for almost 24 hours.

Peter Theisinger, Mars Exploration Rover project manager, began Thursday's press conference by telling reporters that they had not received contact from Spirit, either through relays from the Mars Global Surveyor or the Mars Odyssey spacecraft now orbiting the red planet.

[night reader]

Yesterday's news... but still down after 24 hours. One peep from Radio transmission but no data!

[old3030]

That will teach them to use Windows instead of Unix...

[night reader]

Project manager says that the situation remains serious and that "no one single fault ... that we can conceive of" can explain this anomaly.

Sounds like a total catastrophe! Any thoughts?

[jokar]

For the DSL impaired. . . .


However, Jennifer Trosper, mission manager of Surface Operations, interrupted the press briefing to announch that a signal had been recieved from the rover via its direct link to Earth. That said, no direct data had yet to be received from the robotic geologist.

Theisinger explained that the situation remains serious and that "no one single fault ... that we can conceive of" can explain this anamoly.

Spirit can communicate with Earth directly with an onboard "X-band systems," or up to either of NASA's two orbiting spacecraft using a UHF antenna. There are four chances each day to reach the orbiters.

NASA receives signals from spacecraft at through its Deep Space Network (DSN) tracking stations in Australia, Spain and California.

Direct Mars-to-Earth communications are reserved for critical Spirit mission data, such as rover health and engineering. It takes about 10 minutes for a radio message, traveling at the speed of light, to travel between planets. Signals transmitted to the orbiters can be delayed as little as 90 minutes to as long as 24 hours because if the way each orbiter works and communicates with Earth.

A communiqué released late afternoon Wednesday from JPL indicated an unresolved issue with the status of the Spirit Mars rover.

According to the statement, ground controllers were able to send commands to the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit early Wednesday and received a simple signal acknowledging that the rover heard them.

However, ground controllers here did not receive expected scientific and engineering data from Spirit during scheduled communication passes during the rest of that martian day.

[lasereye]

I believe there's been a series of odd occurences with Mars probes over the decades, including Soviet probes. Several were never heard from again as they entered the Mars atmosphere.

[The G Man]

"My God ... it's filled with stars."

[TomGuy]

Tin foil alert

It seems a lot of probes, rockets, etc. 'fail' on their mission either in orbit or after landing.

Maybe those Martians view it as space debris and collect into a junk pile underground.

[JimVT]

Any thoughts?

Without doubt...the eardrum-shattering, extreme high decibel ranting of Howard Dean the other day reached the Rover and caused the anomaly!

Since he has toned down the rhetoric...but not BS....Spirit is feeling better!

[FireTrack]

"Sounds like a total catastrophe! Any thoughts?"

Naaaaa....

"Sounds like a total catastrophe! Any thoughts?"

Naaaaa....

"Sounds like a total catastrophe! Any thoughts?"

Naaaaa....

[mass55th]

Did it mysteriously go down after Dean's meltdown?

[Viking2002]

And Windows ME at that. Somewhere on Mars, there's a cold rover with a tiny little Blue Screen of Death flashing on it's display. LOL

[djf]

It's possible it FOUND an anomaly...

[TheDon]

According to the statement, ground controllers were able to send commands to the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit early Wednesday and received a simple signal acknowledging that the rover heard them.

Hmmmm...probably need to send < CTRL > < ALT > < DEL >.

[RightWhale]

It seems a lot of probes, rockets, etc. 'fail' on their mission either in orbit or after landing.

They all fail eventually. This Rover counts as a success. It also may be counted as another pile of space junk, but useful data was obtained.

[radiohead]

Rush suggested it might be a coverup while the vehicle secretly starts drilling for oil for Halliburton.

[chimera]

They all fail eventually. This Rover counts as a success. It also may be counted as another pile of space junk, but useful data was obtained.

Eventually. But some, like Voyager and its trusty RTGs, just keep going and going...

C'mon, guys. I know how to fix this. Press the "Reset" button. Turn the power switch off and on. When I had Windows ME, I had to do that all the time.

[blau993]

All Your Rovers Is Belong To Us!

[hobson]

Perhaps there's another explanation:

This just in:'water on Mars';
Bob Rubin: All Wet;
Serious anomaly" silences Mars rover Spirit,

The headlines just keep adding up.:)

[Diogenesis]

The transmissions failed shortly after someone found out that the "colors"
NASA were claiming were wrong and did not correspond with the colors on Earth.

Calling Art Bell and Rich Hoagland .....

[boris]

Infected by Beagle with SARS: Sudden Anti-Radio Silence.