What Happened to Spirit Rover on Mars?

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The Spirit Rover on Mars experienced communication failures, leading to concerns about its operational status. Initially, it entered a reboot cycle, risking total power loss, but NASA managed to establish contact and identified the issue as related to its flash memory. Optimism grew as Spirit resumed sending data and regained some scientific capabilities. The rover's design allows for operation without the faulty memory, and NASA expressed confidence in its potential to exceed its mission objectives. Overall, while challenges remain, there is hope for the rover's continued functionality and success in its mission.
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Today's Bad News?

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=1&u=/ap/20040122/ap_on_sc/mars_rover_27

Bummer
 
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Astronomy news on Phys.org
Dammit!
 
Now if they'd had a human being there...
 
Originally posted by selfAdjoint
Now if they'd had a human being there...
...he'd be dead.
 
Originally posted by russ_watters
...he'd be dead.
Hopefully they'd have the foresight to equip him with a space suit as well!

- Warren
 
Originally posted by chroot
Hopefully they'd have the foresight to equip him with a space suit as well!

- Warren
If he did have one, he could pull it back out of the pool of water they were looking for, dry it off and email "Eureka!"
 
Originally posted by russ_watters
...he'd be dead.

That's certainly a possibility. On the other hand, a human present may have been able to correct a problem not anticipated. Of course since this wasn't a manned mission in the first place, it is probably pointless to wonder what difference it would have made.
 
Damn, another one. Hopefully they will repair it somehow.

Two probes in a matter of weeks... I can imagine the alien conspiracy stories already.
 
If a human were there he would still be standing staring at his broken equipment tying to contact Earth to tell him what to do. There would not have been any significant amount of real analytical tools because the entire pay load would be devoted to life support systems for the TOURIST. They would totally incapable of doing any significant science because the Tourists would be more flyboys then scientists. Considering the cost of this mission for the limited payload, can you imagine the cost of a mission with a large enough capsule to support say 5 humans?

Until we can prefect Robotic missions sending men along will only result in bodies on Mars or in Space while reducing the amount core scientific information acquired by the mission.

Once we have perfected Robotic missions we can then start to send tourists into space.
 
  • #10
Hear, hear!

$400 million or so may seem expensive, but in any realistic analysis of cost-benefit, robotic science (outside the Earth's atmosphere) wins by many OOM ... even when you include realistic probability of failure.
 
  • #11
If a human were there he would still be standing staring at his broken equipment tying to contact Earth to tell him what to do.

Apollo 13.
 
  • #12
Originally posted by selfAdjoint
Apollo 13.

Did not have a communications failure, or they would have been dead.
 
  • #13
Originally posted by enigma
Did not have a communications failure, or they would have been dead.

...and almost were anyway.

As for today's news...

I heard late last night that the rover had failed to communicate just before the Martian sunset. The hope was that after shutting down for the evening it would come back up...as happened with the Viking missions a couple of times.

They still sound somewhat optimistic at NASA...officially...
 
  • #14
The last I read they had gotten a single tone reply to a request, which seemed to indicate that the rover went into safe-mode. This would mean that there is a chance that they could bring it back on line.
 
  • #16
It took a while for the Martians to finish building their duplicate simulated environment to put the rover in.



Njorl
 
  • #17
Originally posted by Njorl
It took a while for the Martians to finish building their duplicate simulated environment to put the rover in.



Njorl
Njorl, I love reading your posts!

On a related (kinda) note. Looks like they confirmed the detection of water/ice on Mars? http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/01/23/mars.water.ice/index.html
 
  • #18
Unfortunately, contact shows us that the Rover is trapped in an endless cycle of rebooting. It starts up, and in the course of going through its normal startup procedures it encounters an anomaly which convinces the onboard computer that it needs to reboot. Then it shuts down and repeats the process.

It seems to me one of the main dangers of this is that the Rover is probably continuing this cycle through the night, when the solar panels are not gathering energy. If the problem is not corrected soon, it could totally drain itself of all power and go permanently dead.
 
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  • #19
that sounds like a death sentence to me...
 
  • #20
Uh oh.. sounds like they decided to use Microsoft software... *kidding*

- Warren
 
  • #21
I wonder if there is any plans for missions to inspect the carcases of all the dead hardware now littering the surface of Mars. Might be able learn something about what is happening.
 
  • #22
Do these crafts contain the CD's with names of the two million people who signed up? I wasn't sure which mission was supposed to carry these disks.
 
  • #23
Originally posted by Ivan Seeking
Do these crafts contain the CD's with names of the two million people who signed up? I wasn't sure which mission was supposed to carry these disks.

I believe it does.
 
  • #24
Okay so today (Sat. Jan. 24th) Spirit sent back a stream of data through the Odyssey orbiter. That's the good news, the bad news is it was supposed to be asleep at the time. NASA controllers had sent instructions twice for the orbiter to power down and conserve energy. It didn't.

However, according to http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/spirit_relay_040124.html mission control thinks that they can maintain the Rover's health at its current state "indefinitely". That should give them time to find the solution, if there is one.

Opportunity's landing tonight will be broadcast live over the Internet on NASA TV. If you go to http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/home/index.html there is a link you can click.

I know where I'll be from 11 PM to 1 AM EST!
 
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  • #25
And now, two hours later, I've read a report that they think they've isolated the problem. It would appear to be in thwe flash memory, which the rover can operate without. They say it will be a couple of weeks before they can try roving, though.
 
  • #26
Fantastic news!

From the NASA news conference: Assuming that the rover will last much more than ninety days, about which there is high confidence, now they even hope to complete all of the mission's objectives. The failure analysis suggested a particular strategy that yielded the correct response from the rover...so everyone is quite hopeful that they can regain control.
 
  • #27
Originally posted by chroot
Uh oh.. sounds like they decided to use Microsoft software... *kidding*

- Warren

FWIW, Spirit runs on Java. So do I, but the caffeinated kind from Columbia, not the software from Sun Microsystems that Spirit uses. Spirit runs on sun (solar) power too. More standing around than running lately I suppose.

Monday morning brain wanderings...
 
  • #28
Originally posted by Ivan Seeking
From the NASA news conference: Assuming that the rover will last much more than ninety days, about which there is high confidence...
Has a probe ever not exceeded its design life by double? Engineers are always conservative and there is a safety factor on top of that.

Did you guys see that it was essentially stuck in an error->reboot->error->reboot loop? It rebooted like 30 times before they regained control. Glad to see they've got it back now.
 
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  • #29
Originally posted by Phobos
FWIW, Spirit runs on Java. So do I, but the caffeinated kind from Columbia, not the software from Sun Microsystems that Spirit uses. Spirit runs on sun (solar) power too. More standing around than running lately I suppose.

Monday morning brain wanderings...

Dammit Phobos, coffee comes from Colombia not Columbia,
have another cup :smile:
 
  • #30
well, I get it mail ordered with my CDs.

mea culpa
 
  • #31
If they did go through with manned-space missions to Mars, I don't think they would be unequipped for fixing problems. They would be equipped to fix everything, when something goes wrong(and it will). Mars is a far way to fly without any tools. How do you think they fix satellites,telescopes?
 
  • #32
Spirit update:
Spirit sent back its first image since the problems started last week. But more repairs are still needed.
 
  • #33
It is the 30th of Jan., and according to http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/spirit_update_040130.html , Spirit has regained scientific capability!

It is expected they will be able to proceed without eliminating the flas memory from the loop. Now let's go RAT a rock!
 
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