Mars Rover in "Safe-Mode" - JPL

Spaceflight Now.com ^ | 01/22/2004 | Spaceflight Now

[Hiwayman]

Controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory believe the Mars rover Spirit has placed itself into "safe-mode" after experiencing some sort of problem, and officials remain hopeful that engineers can coax the craft back into operation.

"We are cautiously encouraged," JPL director Charles Elachi said on NASA Television a short time ago. "We are still concerned until we understand the problem and we address it."

Spirit abruptly stopped relaying its scientific and health data to Earth on Wednesday, sending a streak of fear through Mission Control when the rover went silent.

But earlier today, a signal was sent from Earth to Mars and Spirit responded with a simple tone.

"We did send a command to the spacecraft on a specific channel and we got a response back basically saying 'yeah, I am here' and we got exactly what we expected from it. So that gave us the indication, because it is on that specific channel that we got the response, is that the spacecraft is in safe-mode. Something kind of went wrong and it put itself into a safe-mode," Elachi said.

"The way we set the spacecraft is that if there is something abnormal, it goes into a certain safe-mode. The indication when we linked and it responded positively is that it is most likely in a certain safe-mode."

Controllers are now preparing for the next step in sorting out the problem and bringing Spirit back to useful life.

"We had to team go home and rest. At 5 o'clock tonight (8 p.m. EST; 0100 GMT) they come back and work a plan for the next communication opportunity which occurs at 3 a.m. Pacific time tomorrow morning (6 a.m. EST; 1100 GMT). We will be using the same channel that we used earlier this morning and we got the positive response."

Instead of asking for just a simple tone reply, controllers will instruct Spirit to play back some of its engineering data.

"We want some of its memory so we can do a diagnostic and understand what has happened, what are the corrective actions that need to be done and how do we bring it carefully and thoughtfully to its normal operational mode."

That direct Earth-to-Mars link occurs after Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey craft make overnight flights above the landing site. The orbiters will be in "listen-only" modes and not sending commands to Spirit. As a result, Elachi said he doesn't expect to hear anything from the rover during the passes if Spirit is in safe-mode.

Engineers are delving through the possible reasons that triggered Spirit to stop talking yesterday. Thus far, it is unknown exactly what caused the situation.

"There could be a possibility of some problem with the software in the spacecraft, similar to what happens in your computer," Elachi cited as one of many potential issues.

Options available to the team to fix the problem include correcting a software glitch, rebooting the entire spacecraft or, if it is a hardware failure, developing a plan to work around the faulty part.

"We have a very valuable asset up there that we did a lot of hard work to get it there safely. The public is all excited about it. So we need to do things methodically and carefully. There is nothing that is rushing us to actually go and do something immediately -- the spacecraft has power, the temperature seems to be appropriate," Elachi said.

"In any exploration you do, you always get anxious moments. Things had been working so well. When you are doing something which is 100 million miles away, roving on a different planet, there are going to be some anomalies or going to be some problems.

"So the key thing that is important is to stay calm, thoughtful and careful and not to react too quickly to when a problem actually occurs because sometimes you can do more harm than good by reacting too quick.

"It is a pretty smart machine that we have up there and the key thing that we are going to do next is to communicate with it tomorrow morning and ask it to send us some data down so we can do a diagnostic of what's the problem," Elachi said.

[Hiwayman]

Spirit ain't dead yet...looks like it went into a protective state until NASA/JPL can find out what happened!

[farmfriend]

ping

[commish]

This is a typical fail-safe setup for any remotely operated equipment. The machine will basically shut itself down until it can be (to put it simply) "rebooted".

[oceanview]

just reboot the thing.

[Riley]

"It is a pretty smart machine that we have up there and the key thing that we are going to do next is to communicate with it tomorrow morning and ask it to send us some data down so we can do a diagnostic of what's the problem," Elachi said.

Lets give R. Lee Ermey a microphone and a radio and have him handle it.

"WHAT IS YOUR MALFUNCTION, NUMBN*TS?"

[Helotes]

Is it just me or does anyone else think it an erie coincidence that just as everyone starts talking about how it looks like Spirit may have found water, Spirit stops talking? The little green men put a stop to any news right away, No?

[Hiwayman]

101100000,1110101010101101,10101000011 = ctrl, alt, delete.

[BenLurkin]

[unixfox]

Maybe it just needs an updated driver. 8-}

[Arkinsaw]

Well, this is good news. This occurred with Pathfinder also so maybe they will be able to reboot. I hope they are able to figure out what it was because having this happen every day or so would be a pain.

[TC Rider]

I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that.

[Orangedog]

If the designers didn't build in a reboot routine that could be triggered from Earth, they should be shown the door.

[longtermmemmory]

Remember the jupiter probe which had the antena fail to deploy. Nasa was able to work around that one too.

[antaresequity]

SPIRIT ROVER experienced a runtime error 419
ABORT RETRY FAIL

[michigander]

"WHAT IS YOUR MALFUNCTION, NUMBN*TS?"

[Prince Caspian]

"WHAT IS YOUR MALFUNCTION, NUMBN*TS?"

You grabastic piece of amphibious sh#t!

[Hugin]

This btw demonstrates why the people who say putting humans into space is too expensive and we should use machines are just plain wrong. If a manned expedition has an equipment failure they can fix it. If a robot breaks down that's a lot of wasted money.

[RogueIsland]

This is encouraging. We joke, and it's natural to do so, but I try to remember that real people have invested a lot of hopes, dreams, and sweat in this project, and I really want to see it succeed for them. I have to say I still have a sense of awe when I realize that we've actually managed to project our presence onto entirely different planets. It still amazes me. Any time I get down about our future as a race, I just have to think of this sort of thing and it renews my faith in us as a species.

[Dilbert56]

Software was written in Java - probably took to long to run garbage collection. Maybe they got interplanetary spam or a pop-up.

[Bush Cheney]

If the designers didn't build in a reboot routine that could be triggered from Earth, they should be shown the door.

I think you are underestimating the complexity of this spacecraft. A reboot in which you are considering is not even possible with a spacecraft of this magnitude. You may be able to reset components, or reload software algorithms, but it is not like resetting your home computer.