Thursday January 22, 2004 at 12:14 PM

Spirit Hits a Bump

Appearing in  What Not

CNN and others are reporting that NASA has lost contact with the Mars Rover Spirit. In the words of project manager Pete Theisinger, there was a “very serious anomaly” and “[t]here is not one single fault that explains this.” Although the rover is not dead, it has apparently entered a “fault mode” where it is only transmitting random strings of binary code that cannot be deciphered by scientists.

The BBC quotes deputy project manager Richard Cook as saying, “Effectively what it means is the radio was on but the computer wasn’t sending information over to it.”

I can’t imagine the frustration, disappointment, and anxiety the big brains at JPL must be feeling right now. There are so many different things that could have happened: anything from a hardware failure to a software crash to a couple of Martian kids throwing rocks.

Okay, so the Martian kids thing is pushing it but still, it must be incredibly difficult to be trying to talk to a robot 30+ million miles away and getting little more back than 0010100110100100101101001001010101.

Let’s hope the optimism of principal investigator Steve Squyres is warranted:

“There are two reasons to be optimistic. One is that Spirit is very, very good at keeping itself safe. This vehicle knows how to protect itself when something goes wrong, and can do so for long periods of time. The other reason for optimism is that the MER engineering team is very, very good at figuring out what’s going on when something goes wrong. Given enough time they’re going to get it, and I expect Spirit to give them all the time they need.”

Steve Squyres
January 22, 2004

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For more on the Mars Rover Spirit:

• Offical Mars Rover site from JPL
• Special report from Space.com
• Stunning animation of the full mission
• Rover information from Cornell University

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