Posted on 01/11/2007 1:46:51 AM PST by burzum
LOS ANGELES - Human error may have doomed the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, which abruptly fell silent last year after a decade of meticulously mapping the Red Planet, a scientist said this week.
Officials at NASA headquarters said the theory is just one of several possibilities into Global Surveyor's failure. The space agency announced the formation of an internal review board on Wednesday to investigate why the probe lost contact during a routine adjustment of its solar array.
John McNamee, deputy director of solar system exploration at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the $154 million Global Surveyor, said a preliminary investigation points to incorrect software commands uploaded to the spacecraft last June as the likely culprit.
(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...
Apparently the bad software update caused the solar arrays to hit their mechanical stops which then triggered safe mode. This safe mode then orientated the spacecraft so that its radiator (which normally cools the spacecraft) was pointed at the sun. The radiator then overheated the battery.
The spacecraft did last for 10 years (for $154 million) so I'm not going to go grab my pitchfork and torch just yet. It is a pity though. I wonder how long MGS could have lasted if it didn't have this problem. 20 years? More? It should be noted that it was only rated for 2.
I suppose getting ten years out of it is better than dumping a brand new probe in the Martian atmosphere because you don't know the difference between feet and meters.
This sort of thing has cropped up before, and it has always been attributable to human error.
It was a bad program, so the programmer and the code reviewers must not be happy right now. Especially since they just got everyone at their center layed off or transferred since the mission is now over.
I think we already have vastly better equipment in orbit, with resolutions much better than the Surveyor.
A website is out there somewheres... it has hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of surface images. You can bet a good many have not been examined really close.
The real deal is the Phoenix mission. We WILL find LIFE ON MARS.
And then find out it came from Earth.
According to this article we already found it---and killed it.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1764130/posts
Years ago I lived in an apartment in Albany with roaches.
I'm long gone.
They're still there.
We mighta killed a couple of Mars microbes, but no way did we get them all!
Those roaches would probably do fine on Mars.
Well, we have to assume there's life on Mars. The first dozen or so probes we sent didn't have ultra pure industrial strength decontamination.
One of the guys who was assembling it picked up a screwdriver, then picked his nose, then picked up a part...
The rest is history.
And thus exposed to the radiation of interplanetary space, the Blob was born!
Stranger things have happened!
Two hundred years ago, who would believe in airmailed hotdogs?
Scientists work with a faith that the purpose for everything is already set.
A small part of me (very small at times) still thinks that the purpose for the universe is still unfolding, like petals on a rose, and we still have a chance of being delighted and creative and in some small way blessed.
What kind of battery are they using that can be used and recharged over a ten year span?
No such error can be the fault of one guy. Several other people missed it, too.
Unless, of course, they were all Martians secretly working for NASA who shut the mission down because we were getting too close to the truth about Mars.
After 10 years, my can opener also quit working. Coincidence?
In my neighborhood, when things mysteriously fall silent, the name "Nicky T'reefingers" usually pops up.
Bad software update?......Microsoft programmed this thing?.........
Coming from HAL9000, that sounds very self serving..........8^)......
The one who sent it is not necessarily the one who wrote it.....
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