Mars Probe Has Software Glitch

http://news4colorado.com/nationworld/topstories_story_023135646.html ^

[Bush Cheney]

CBS News) NASA engineers have determined there's a software problem with the Mars Spirit rover on the Red Planet's surface, and it won't be a quick fix.

Earlier Friday, they got a half-hour of transmissions from their ailing robotic patient on Mars.

NASA heard from the six-wheeled rover for 10 minutes at about 4:30 a.m. PST and received data for 20 minutes about an hour later.

"I would suspect we would not be restoring functionality to spirit for a significant period of time," Pete Theisinger, rover project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said.

Spirit's last useful transmissions to Earth were two days ago.

"We know that the sequence that began Wednesday morning ... did not run to completion," Theisinger said.

The good news, he said, is that there is little imminent danger Spirit running out of power or having temperature problems.

Project engineer Randy Wesson said there's a duplicate of the Rover at JPL, and it's being used to diagnose the problem.

"We will put in the program that it was running and feed it the same set of commands, and see if we can get it to "safe" — to shut down — and once we can duplicate the failure mechanism, then we can figure out what set of commands we need to do to wake it back up," he said.

Spirit is one-half of an $820 million mission. Its twin probe, Opportunity, is expected to land on Mars late Saturday at a site halfway around Mars from Spirit, in a region called Meridiani Planum," Theisinger's statement Friday morning.

The twin rovers are supposed to examine the Red Planet's dry rocks and soil for evidence that it was once wetter and more hospitable to life.

Meanwhile, Europe's Mars lander has been missing since its deployment last month, but its orbiter Friday sent confirmation of water ice at the south pole.

Until Wednesday, Spirit had functioned almost flawlessly and NASA scientists and engineers had been jubilant.

Cushioned by its air bags, the rover made a bull's-eye landing, surviving what was by far the most dangerous part of the mission — the descent through the atmosphere at 12,000 mph. Then on Jan. 15, in another nail-biting moment for NASA, the rover safely rolled down a ramp onto Mars' ruddy soil without becoming snagged.

It has snapped thousands of pictures, including breathtaking panoramic views and microscopic images of the martian soil. It also carried out preliminary work analyzing the minerals and elements that make up its surroundings.

The mission's main scientist, Steven Squyres of Cornell University, cautioned that communications problems are common on spacecraft.

The problem surfaced while Spirit was preparing to resume analysis of its first rock, just a few yards from where it landed.

[Glenn]

Damn programmers.

[finnman69]

[cibco]

I told 'em not to use Windows 98...

[pabianice]

Hey! I'll volunteer to fix it at my usual rate of $ 65/hour plus expenses...

[CholeraJoe]

I knew we could blame it on Bill Gates. Any minute the Mac crowd will show up and swear this never would have happened with Mac OS.

[Bush Cheney]

It would only make sense Opportunity has the same exact code .... lets hope they can come up with a fix before that one starts rolling.

[CasearianDaoist]

They don;t think it is software now.

[finnman69]

[50sDad]

Hey! I'll volunteer to fix it at my usual rate of $ 65/hour plus expenses...

A tidy sum, if you include the $0.42 milage to get to the jobsite...

[Jack Wilson]

Shouldn't have sent the programming offshore...

[ChromeDome]

But if it was a Mac, it would have cost 3 times as much and there would have only been 1 supplier for the hardware.

[BureaucratusMaximus]

Any minute the Mac crowd will show up and swear this never would have happened with Mac OS.

And thru offshoring to them damn Indian software developers.

[6ppc]

I knew we could blame it on Bill Gates. Any minute the Mac crowd will show up and swear this never would have happened with Mac OS.

Uhhh...actually it's running Linux. I'll bet the guy who wrote that routine isn't getting much sleep right now!

[BureaucratusMaximus]

Uhhh...actually it's running Linux.

Are you series?. If true, its very ironic.

[Ingtar]

Offshore JAVA programming. (shudders)

[6ppc]

And thru offshoring to them damn Indian software developers.

Hee, hee...I wonder how much "HadjiiCode" is running in that box? {8^)

[overtaxed_canadian]

Uhhh...actually it's running Linux. I'll bet the guy who wrote that routine isn't getting much sleep right now!

It actually runs on VxWorks and not Linux.

[6ppc]

It's true (and series)

[Glenn]

Any minute the Mac crowd will show up and swear this never would have happened with Mac OS.

That's OS X to you, bub.