Friday January 23, 2004 at 3:32 PM
Spirit's Improving; Opportunity Near
Appearing in What Not
I’m relieved to report that the Mars Rover Spirit is once again communicating with NASA. In the words of Project Manager Pete Theisinger, “The spacecraft sent limited data in a proper response to a ground command, and we’re planning for commanding further communication sessions later today.”
In the spirit of the half-empty, half-full glass thing, Theisinger said, “…the chances that [this rover] will be perfect again are not good. But the chances that it will not work at all are also low. We are somewhere in that broad middle.”
Based on published reports, the rover is suffering from a software problem that is causing it to reboot, load the flight program, and then reach some condition that forces another reboot. Microsoft could not be reached for comment.
NASA expects it to be “many days, perhaps a couple of weeks” before Spirit is back up and roving.
Meanwhile, the rover Opportunity, Spirit’s identical twin, is on pace to bounce on Martian soil at 9:05 PST Saturday. Opportunity is set to explore the Meridiani Planum, a plain near the Martian equator. Once it arrives the two rovers will be half a world away from one another and 30 million miles away from Earth.
It blows my mind.
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Elsewhere on Mars:
