Nasa: Somebody set up us the bomb

[Red Squirrel]

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/space/2366341

NASA experienced a potentially serious loss of communications with the Mars Spirit rover today, the first sign of trouble since the $410 million spacecraft descended to the planet's surface nearly three weeks ago.

Experts at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., sifted through a list of potential explanations -- a power loss, software trouble caused possibly by cosmic radiation, or difficulties in the control computer for communications gear.

The timing was especially worrisome to NASA in that 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 number of personnel available to manage Opportunity's risky landing and attempt to recover Spirit.

"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)."

Spirit responded early today to a command from Earth with a simple tone that offered some optimism to flight controllers that the spacecraft was producing electricity and that its computer and communications equipment were working. But the response lacked more explicit content about the status of the spacecraft.

The lack of information left the experts guessing at Spirit's fate.

Theisinger said mission managers planned to meet late today to confer on their options before attempting to initiate communications using a large number of instructions for the 383-pound, six-wheeled rover.

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 more 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.

Engineers did not believe that weather on Mars caused the current 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 in the distant past.

Spirit is parked close to the lander near a football-sized 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 to take a look.

Mars has proven a difficult but compelling target for scientists because of the prospect the planet once fostered some form of life and possibly still does.

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

Before Spirit's Jan. 3 landing, NASA said it would consider its latest Mars mission campaign a success if only one of the two rovers completed the journey safely.

Each of the spacecraft was designed for 90-day missions during which they would travel up to two miles exploring the rocks and soil.

Within days of its landing, Spirit transmitted to Earth a three-dimensional color panorama of its landing site along with a spectroscopic mineral analysis of the surroundings.

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:1939, old post ID:15945

[Red Squirrel]

Talk about a fun billion dollar ride huh? Also expensive 56K wireless internet

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:1939, old post ID:18099