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Nasa rover breaks down on Mars

It is too bad but they get a second chance on Monday

This is a dissapointment. The rover seemed to be making great progress and now, for no apparent reason it is gone. I for one hope that NASA can rescue this mission so that I can get more great desktop backgrounds for my Mac 😉

Seriously, even if this rover is lost for good there is one more landing on another part of the planet sometime on Monday morning. Fingers crossed that all goes well with that.

By the way, I am not sure what Operating System the rovers use but the CPU is a variation of the PPC. Not that it is running OS X or anything like that; apparently the memory used is only 128 MB.
 
Re: It is too bad but they get a second chance on Monday

Originally posted by Sol
This is a dissapointment. The rover seemed to be making great progress and now, for no apparent reason it is gone. I for one hope that NASA can rescue this mission so that I can get more great desktop backgrounds for my Mac 😉

Seriously, even if this rover is lost for good there is one more landing on another part of the planet sometime on Monday morning. Fingers crossed that all goes well with that.
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It's not gone, it's just probably temporarily incapacitated (I hope this is the case). If you read my last post you would see.

I hope that Opportunity gets it's opportunity to do better. Second time's a charm 😉
apparently the memory used is only 128 MB.
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Edit: Nevermind. you're right.
The rovers are equipped with three types of memory: 128 megabytes of random access memory, or RAM, which holds real-time data that is wiped out when power is lost; 256 megabytes of flash RAM, which holds data with or without power; and programmable memory, which is used to store critical flight software.
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Edit: Update:
Global Surveyor made its pass over and did not detect any signal from the rover. This is not exactly a bad thing though as if the rover really is in safe mode as they think it is then it wouldn't attempt such a communication anyway. They are getting ready for a low data rate communication secession on the same channel that they received the "heart beat" on this morning. This will occur tonight when Earth rises.

Cross your fingers!
 
A news story said they hope it is a software problem, in which case they may be able to correct it by downloading new software to the rover. Wouldn't that be uploading? Especially when it's "up there" on Mars!
 
you know, we're going to come across some broken rover or something on Mars several years from now, and be like "WTF is this??? who built it??? Why is it here??? oh, wait... nevermind..."

I could just see a NASA programmer sitting in front of his computer, checking lines of code, and then suddenly freezing, seeing that the glitch is just one character out of place...

Mars... Eater of space ships...
 
Imagine how much you'd get on ebay for one of these rovers in a few years....if you could actually get them 😛

Even some of the Apollo stuff on the moon would be priceless - and a little easier to get to 😀

D
 
Originally posted by Mr. Anderson
Tomorrow the other rover comes in for a landing....
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I knew it! The partial information conveyed from Australia inadvertently triggered a conflict in the program. The Spirit rover has lost its mind, a la HAL in 2001. This is 2004, A Mars Odyssey. Spirit is all speed ahead to the landing spot of Opportunity, where it will engage the other rover in a Martian Battle-bot competition!

BE THERE as the rovers do spectral analysis of each other (Sweet!!) and drill 5mm deep holes into each other in a fight to the death (while searching for life). Bring your own landing bags because this one will be OUT OF THIS WORLD!!!
 
Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do.

I know everything hasn't been quite right with me...but I can assure you now...very confidently...that it's going to be all right again. I feel much better now. I really do.
 

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It's lucky for Apple that Spirit seems spirited again. Today's QuickTime News to e-mail subscribers has a headline story "Getting in the spirit of Mars". Apple certainly wouldn't want to associate itself with a broken-down rover on its most embarrassing day. So that's one more reason to hope that Spirit will be happily prancing all over the surface of Mars again.
 
On the "David Letterman Show" last evening his guest was Dr. Jim Garven, NASA scientist. Dr. Garven works on the Mars project. He said that they are receiving bleeps from Spirit. "There are a lot of very talented scientists at ther moment working on this. The task is to determing what mode it is in and how to wake it up. We are also focusing on the Opportunity, that is due to land on Mars early Sunday morning EST.
 
Vast interplanetary conspiracy?

Let me be the first to point out that if Spirit wasn't sending us its usual data and photographs for 2 days, we don't actually know where it was for those 2 days. Could it have been taking a little side trip it doesn't want us to know about? When will Oliver Stone get us some answers?
 
Originally posted by Frohickey
RAD6000 Space Computer

RAD6000 is 32 bit
33MHz
8 KB cache
3.3v
running VxWorks OS
same as the one used in the Mars Pathfinder

When was Spirit launched? Couldn't they have used the RAD750 (PowerPC based)?
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Scary to think that the processor is so friggin slow - and all because it has to be shielded from radiation.

And this processor is pre PowerPC....😱

D
 
but, you must realize, the newest technology is not necessarily the most robust technology. i doubt nasa wanted to save a few hundred/thousand dollars by using an old piece of hardware, especially an important one such as the cpu.
 
We Americans on the west coast are luckier than those of you on the east coast. After all, we only have to wait until Saturday for Opportunity to land, while you have to wait until Sunday! (And we get to sleep 3 hours later than you every single workday!) 😉

Let's hope for a smooth (despite being bouncy) landing for Opportunity. As of two days ago, the landing site (called Meridiani Planum) weather report was:
No dust storms or water ice clouds. Local dust storm activity was noted on several occasions 2100 km NW of the site. These storms lasted less than 48 huours and showed no substantial southward movement and are not expected to effect(*) weather conditions for the Opportunity landing.
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(*) Note: They mean "affect"!
 
Quote:

The commonest meanings of Affect (a verb never a noun) are:
To produce a change in, To influence, to have an effect on.

Quote:

Effectis both a noun and a verb. As a verb it means: 'To accomplish,'to achieve,' To bring about,'To result in';

Quote:

Effect as a noun, 'That which is produced by an agent or cause,' a conseqence of, An impression left on the mind
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these two words suck.
 
So, in fact, they either meant 'affect the weather' or 'effect a change in the weather'. Two different ways of correcting their english...

To me this whole situation highlights how much more versatile having real human beings up there would be. I've heard that, if we wanted to we could actually have someone on Mars inside a decade. Of course, in order to do that Bush would actually have to foot some of the bill during his presidency. But the knowledge that we really are that close is kind of exciting to me. Now if only they'd press on with it... Make it happen...
 
Originally posted by Snowy_River
To me this whole situation highlights how much more versatile having real human beings up there would be.
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Possibly, but this may be a critical hardware failure. It's not like astronauts that have a critical hardware failure can run to CompMARS and buy a replacement. A catastrophic failure on Spirit means it quits working. For humans, it means death.

There's only so much you can do to help a robotic probe or a landing party from so far away. Failures like this should underline just how difficult and unpredictably problematic space exploration can be. Take this as a cautionary note, not a rallying cry to send people to Mars.

It's all fun and games until somebody loses and dies.
 
Jimmy Buffett said it best

"We spent ninety jillion dollars,
trying to get a look at Mars,
I hear universal laughter ringing out among the stars."

-Jimmy Buffett
 
Originally posted by jayscheuerle
Possibly, but this may be a critical hardware failure. It's not like astronauts that have a critical hardware failure can run to CompMARS and buy a replacement. A catastrophic failure on Spirit means it quits working. For humans, it means death.

There's only so much you can do to help a robotic probe or a landing party from so far away. Failures like this should underline just how difficult and unpredictably problematic space exploration can be. Take this as a cautionary note, not a rallying cry to send people to Mars.

It's all fun and games until somebody loses and dies.
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A couple of points. First, explorers have always risked their lives. How many of the early explorers that travelled across the Atlantic Ocean in search of the new world die enroute? It's only in modern times that we seem to think that if there's any chance that someone could die doing something that we shouldn't do it.

Next, part of the problem with the rovers is that they have to be technologically complex enough to function by themselves without someone there to help take care of them. It is simply true that the technology needed to keep someone alive on Mars isn't that complex. It is, essentially, 1960s or 1970s technology. To make a rover function and perform various experiments, it takes more like 1990s technology. Sure, advanced 'toys' could be taken up with a manned flight, but then if something went wrong with them, there would be a practical way to try to figure out what.

The simple truth is that we already have the technology to send a manned space flight to Mars and back. We could do it within the next 5 to 10 years. But it couldn't be done the way that NASA seems to like to do things, packing as much bleeding edge technology in as possible. (Note that right now, for space, 1990s technology is bleeding edge.) Of course, there a small matter of being willing to invest the money that it would take either way.

In any event, I hope that they can figure out what's going wrong with Spirit, eventually. I've heard that the problems with Spirit have now been put on the back burner until they get Opportunity down.

(Oh, just as a final note, I took this as a 'rallying cry to send people to Mars', rather than as a 'cautionary note', simply because I've heard so many people talking about how perfect the robotic space program is, and that there's no need to send people to Mars because robots can do it all, and so on. I am a human space program advocate. However, that said, I do understand that this must also be taken as a cautionary note.)
 
Here's some good news...

Hours before NASA's Opportunity rover will reach Mars, engineers have found a way to communicate reliably with its twin, Spirit, and to get Spirit's computer out of a cycle of rebooting many times a day.
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