ESA's Beagle 2 Hits Signal Snag 21
Talking Goat writes "Space.com is reporting that the European Space Agency has run into a bit of
a problem
with it's recently launched "Beagle 2" spacecraft. An unexpected signal received from
the probe has concerned controllers, and has delayed further systems checks.
Let's hope this isn't a harbinger of things to come; history
hasn't been kind to past Mars probes."
What is this? (Score:4, Informative)
Better write up on the ESA site (Score:5, Informative)
It looks like the Solid State Mass Memory (essentially a modern replacement for the tape recorders found on older spacecraft) had a problem and to avoid writing over the data in the memory, they are delaying tests on Beagle. It's not really a Beagle problem, and it doesn't even look like a biggee for Mars Express. It's probably either a SEU (Single Event Upset) caused by some radiation whizzing through part of the electronics, or some sort of odd software bug (probably fixable with some patching).
Nothing much to see, move along here.