Spirit Rover Communications Error

cybrthng writes "Through yesterdays press release and the current Nasa Briefing there is news that they are having communications errors with contacting spirit. Is she lost or is it something akin to the Pathfinder failures that happened? Or did little green people claim an expensive tonka truck toy?"

Mars Defense System

[pvt_medic]

chalk another one up for the mars defense system.

I found it!

[Anonymous Coward]

On www.ebay.mars/landers/used.

BSOD

[Augusto]

Somewhere in Mars, a little robot has a screen with the Blue Screen of Death.

This would explain it...

[mhazen]

Apparently the rover stumbled on the missing WMD's and had to be "silenced".

WHen we finally get humans there..

[Maeryk]

Why do I suspect we are going to find all of the assorted junk Mars has eaten, neatly disassembled and stacked in piles according to the flag painted on the equipment?

Maeryk

A fatal exception 0E has occurred.....

[flinxmeister]

Please restart your rover. If the problem persists, contact [e-mail].

Ha ha

[Anonymous Coward]

Silly Americans. Beagle was, in actual fact, a saboteur machine, and it has been lying in wait for your little buggy to attack!

Score one for our defence department. God save the Queen!

Soil Science is so interesting.

[glrotate]

A great article about it over here. [confusionroad.com]

Too far.

[banzai75]

Maybe they tried to drive 11 feet with a 10 foot extension cord.

Last Transmission

[da3dAlus]

"Oh Goody! My Illudiom Pew36 Explosive Space Modulator!"
[end carrier]

Conspiracy Theory

[jpsst34]

Some custodial technicial at a large airplane hangar shaped building in northeastern florida or southern california accidentally pulled the CatV cable from the patch panel.

Freaking Martian Hackers...

[Anonymous Coward]

All your spirit are belong to us.

Re:Mars Defense System

[PowerBert]

No, this ones down to Beagle.
It was never intended to send the EU any data, it's a Special Ops lander.
It's spent the past month hunting down Spirit Rover and maintinaing radio silence.
Spirit will be on the end of a solar powered swiss army knife by now.

Of course...

[AnonymousComrade]

NASA probably tried to use metric MHz instead of imperial ones for the communications link!

The most annoying thing...

[CausticPuppy]

There sits Spirit, silent and still on the frigid Martian surface.

Somewhere deep within its electronics, there's an error that was trapped. The message, which would be displayed if only there was a monitor onboard,
simply reads:

Communication error; press any key to retry

Doh.

Lesson learned: be sure to handle your exceptions properly.

Don't worry

[saldek]

The rover is running java, so the garbage collector probably kicked in. Give it a few more days and it should be fine agian.

Re:It escaped!!

[N3WBI3]

We all know whats going on, the Martians hot wired it and are joy riding around. The green bastards also painted flames on the side and put a tacky neon license plate mount on the front..

Re:Mars Defense System

[imitier]

Yes, I must admit that I was hoping more than a little that this news of lost contact would be accompanied by a last few photos taken by the Spirit, showing some shadowy figures approaching the rover and posing for the camera.

Re:BSOD

[borroff]

Of course, it's too early to eliminate the use of the Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator.

certainly the communications software.

[fireduck]

given that NASA uses real player [nasa.gov] for their briefings, they're probably just stuck waiting for the "buffering..." message to finish.

Hoax

[pheared]

It's a hoax. Nasa knows that space exploration will never capture the minds of the people unless it appeals to the least common denominator, just like nascar. They want to introduce car crashes into their missions to revitalize people's interest in the program and to increase funding.

No offence to the original submitter

[ghettoboy22]

But I like my writeup better :P

"ghettoboy22 writes "Multiple news [msn.com] services are reporting [bbc.co.uk] the Martian Interplanetary Defence Force (MIDF) has successfully captured an extraterrestial craft codenamed "Spirit" [space.com] on the outskirts of a small village in Lower Gusev province two days ago, coming on the heals of the successful downing of another [beagle2.com] invasion craft last month. Speculation has insued from Spirit's handlers on Earth who are suggesting the craft was hit with the much feared Martian "Cosmic Ray" computer viri, causing it to speak nothing but jibberish. No worries though - our buddies will have their work cut out for them when Spirit's sister-ship "Opportunity" [nasa.gov] makes it's decent from Martian orbit in T minus 58 hours!""

Jawas.

[nagrommit]

The Jawas came along in their sandcrawler and took the rover. I've seen this before.

Bush knew about this in advance!

[Anonymous Coward]

Now he can justify that manned mission to Mars: Someone has to go press Ctrl-Alt-Delete on Spirit to reboot it!

You poor deluded fool...

[Thud457]

You've obviously never lost your last 75 cents in the snack machine at 3 AM!

Re:Hoax

[Anonymous Coward]

but did it happen at high speeds?!

i admit it was really cool when they started adding and needing air-bags on their probes, but i guess that got old fast when they started landing successfully that way.

and the lack of probe reck pics is a bit disappointing. if they could add a mini-probe to take pics of the main probe in all its bleeding, cut and brused glory, that would help. oh, and shots of the probes family looking fearful for the probes life.

Rover eating beast...

[pastpolls]

Isn't it obvoius that it takes time for the martian rover eater to get from the beagle landing to the spirit landing. I am sure it is pissed off the darn rover got some pictures off before getting eaten.

Re:not as bad as it sounds.

[FreshFunk510]

"Perhaps a software fault ...

Umm, no, I'm quite sure it's a hardware problem. ;P

Re:Ha ha

[el-spectre]

Battlebots, the international/interplanetary edition...

Somewhere deep in the bowels of NASA

[g-san]

Is one really smart pissed of engineer saying I TOLD YOU THIS WAS GONNA HAPPEN.

It's obvious but...

[WIAKywbfatw]

All you Martian explorers are belong to us.

Whoever sets up the Martian Automobile Association is going to make a lot of money.

Re:not as bad as it sounds.

[GMontag]

I have narrowed it down.

1) It is a hardware problem. OR

2) It is a software problem.

I lean towards (1) as nobody that I work with created the software for this device.

Re:Mars Defense System

[Anonymous Coward]

Face it. We're not going to find Mars' WMD until we send troops there.

Oh wait...

Re:Mars Defense System

[Anonymous Coward]

Mars to Earth: "All your rover are belong to us! Make your time!"

Re:You poor deluded fool...

[hesiod]

> You've obviously never lost your last 75 cents in the snack machine at 3 AM!

I don't see it as losing 75 cents, per se, but gaining a shitload of change when I kick the fuck out of the machine... and I still don't have the damn chips.

Re:Ha ha

[pe1rxq]

It took a while longer, but finally the Americans can join us in denial :)

Jeroen

Re:not as bad as it sounds.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that you Darl?

Re:not as bad as it sounds.

[Ummagumma]

Nah, he just stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

If we can't communicate with Spirit . . .

[StefanJ]

. . . does this mean we need a Medium?

Mars Crossing Over
with John Edwards

"I see . . . red rocks! Lots and lots of red rocks! Does that sound familiar?"

"Why, why yes!"

"Now, did this Spirit have . . . are they wheels?"

"Oh, oh yes, yes, Spirit does have wheels! Please, ask it if it's OK!"

"It says it's on a flat, red plain covered with red rocks, and that it's found life and water and everything there is peaceful and cool."

"Oh, thank you, thank you Mr. Edwards!"

Stefan

I knew it was coming

[savagedome]

Mars ISP finally cut him off the network. That rover was transmitting a lot of data.

Beep beep beep!

[Surlyboi]

One night, I was roving mars with it, when all of a sudden it went berserk, the screen started flashing, and all my telemetry just disappeared! All of it. And it was a good rover!

BOT WARS

[Maeryk]

See.. Beagle didnt fail.. it transformed. Out came the titanium pick on the air cylinder, and the saw blades on the grapple arms.

And it sat.. covered in martian dust.. WAITING for Spirit to leave its safety nest in the landing pod..

the only thing missing is an announcer trying to sound worked up over the idea of two robots tearing each other to pieces!

Maeryk

Java bot

[HappyProle]

Its overworked little JVM is probably just garbage collecting...

Now they know

[WormholeFiend]

now they know what happens when you try to grind a strange "rock" shaped like a pyramid.

Richard Hoagland is gonna be soooooo all over this. /tinfoil

Keyboard error

[dougnaka]

Press F1 to continue...

It gives new meaning to the phrase...

[Anonymous Coward]

"my explorer just crashed."

Last transmission..

[iamsure]

I@$hri89&Q24gtr24gr

Which translated to..

"We 0wn3d j00r b0x f00lz! S3nd L1nux b0xez N ch1cks n3xt t1me!"

Don't worry, it's just taking a rest

[BetterThanCaesar]

I believe the Rover is just haging out at the Mars Bar.

Sorry...

It's a conspiracy, I say! A c-o-n-... spiracy!

[hesiod]

NASA knows what's up, they just don't want US to know! They now have live video feeds from Spirit showing Mohammed living it up with his virgins (well, they were virgins a few thousand years ago). But since Bush the Zionist is in control of every step NASA takes, he doesn't want anyone to know that the Muslims are right! The great evil empire is covering up the truth! Mars is heaven, Venus is hell, and he's doomed us all to Venus!

He is intentionally making us all evil to work in his sulfur mines that will be on Venus when we arrive in Hell! Won't SOMEONE PLEASE think of the children!

(Don't mod me down for trolling, it's a joke. Don't like it? Ignore it, probably means you have good taste in humor.)

hmmm

[mikey2600]

Is it really that hard to spell NASA correctly? It's like saying "Ibm" or "Dvd-rw". Bitte!

Re:Maybe Garbled Commands?

[banzai75]

Original Plan:
1) Drive forward
2) Continue for 10 seconds
3) Stop.

PS: No 4) Profit on this one.

Only the first command made it through. Unfortunately, Spirit is now nearly halfway to the Opportunity landing site.

Damn viruses

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the Beagle was infected with the Slammer. That would explain why Beagle never called back, and why the Spirit stopped responding shortly after coming into radio range of the Beagle.

I know I know!

[peadot]

This is the proof of water on Mars we've been waiting for so long:
1. Spirit starts drilling into Adirondack (www.adirondackbeverages.com, anyone?).
2. A stream of water explodes into its face, thus frying its onboard circuitry. :-]

They forgot about Marvin

[Snork Asaurus]

and they have made him VERY angry indeed.

NEWSFLASH!

[Apostata]

Reuters - Bitter unsuccesful UK rival, 'Beagle 2', accused of slamming into 'Spirit' out of jealous rage.

Re:The most annoying thing...

[Anonymous Coward]

In related news, SETI@Home has deciphered it's first alien message, it read:

"Which one's the any key?"

Re:Mars is a dangerous place

[Zordak]

There's nothing like a good engineer's ingenuity, a screwdriver and a soldering iron to get out of a tight spot.

AND DUCT TAPE FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!!! DUCT TAPE!!!

Re:Let's hope its just software

[dubl-u]

But Spirit was only transmitting "pseudo-noise", a random series of zeroes and ones in binary code and not anything the scientists could decipher. - BBC News

The Martians probably just upgraded the codecs.

Re:If we can't communicate with Spirit . . .

[markov_chain]

does this mean we need a Medium?

Q: What do you call a psychic midget that escaped from jail?

A: A small medium at large!

Re:It escaped!!

[potus98]

The green bastards probably added window stickers depicting cartoon characatures of Spirit urinating on Beagle 2.

ASCII art of peeing spacecraft blocked by /. Lameness filter. Guess it was lame.

new hires at nasa

[bilbobuggins]

In a related story, NASA has announced the addition of Miss Cleo to the staff as lead communications officer.

The NASA CEO issued a statement in which he said the repetitive and excited tone of a late night infomercial he watched left him utterly convinced that Miss Cleo could indeed communicate with the the Spirit and all problems should be fixed by Monday.
He also touted the hire as a money saving measure because 'most communications with the Spirit tend to last about 30 seconds, but with Miss Cleo the first five minutes is only $1.95!'

Re:Mars Defense System

[Pirogoeth]

Chalk another one up here [anl.gov], anyway...

The last theory I heard...

[switcha]

was there there was a malfunction between the table saw blade and the Speak & Spell.

Re:not as bad as it sounds.

[Waffle Iron]

In the coming days, if communications are not restored, the spacecraft will enter safe modes that cause it to try harder to transmit and will reset subsystems.

Hopefully, that would work. However, it will be pretty annoying if all of the images it sends back after that are 16-color 640x480 GIFs with the words "Safe Mode" overlayed in the four corners.

Re:You poor deluded fool...

[el-spectre]

Did you know that like a dozen people a year get killed when rocking (top heavy) vending machines, which fall and crush them.

The lesson here is clear. Don't kick the machines. That's immature and dangerous.

Instead, return with a baseball bat :)

Re:Mars Defense System

[N3WBI3]

Dont mess with mars.. [timriordan.com]

Re:Mars Defense System

[NickDngr]

I found the problem! [nickdanger.org]

Re:A fatal exception 0E has occurred.....

[Verteiron]

Yeah, someone's gonna have to go punch the reset button at the console.... volunteers?

Re:Nothing to see here, move along

[Uma Thurman]

Stop that. Every time somebody types that, my modem hangs up. It's getting old.

Re:A fatal exception 0E has occurred.....

[Sloppy]

The horrible thing is that they restarted it, and now it's on a screen that says, "Keyboard not found, press F1 to continue."

Re:BSOD

[mcdade]

No .. it does.. it has a kernal panic, core dumped. message and dropped to single user mode waiting for a prompt cause they are running Sun equipment on it.

As a matter of fact the President of Sun Canada was at our University yesterday telling us this!

now they have to make a "hand" module to send to mars so it can type in the commands they need to reboot the system.

Re:Maybe Garbled Commands?

[The Bungi]

ADVANCE 10 @#$^*&@# [no carrier]

whiiirrr.... meters? ok. chug chug...

ADVANCE 10 FEET

*thump* ...shit

WHAT HAPPEN

i've fallen and i can't get up

TRY DOING @#$%^&*(!@ [no carrier]

sigh

It's at the bottom of a lake

[GoldMace]

They sent it to look for signs of water, maybe it found some, and is at the bottom of a lake. I wonder if they even bothered to make it waterproof.

Re:Ha ha

[interiot]

Aye, our next mars rover should be shaped like a wedge. As for weapons, do we still have that silly "no electricity, no chemicals" restriction? With the amount of money the parties are bringing to the table, surely they can spend a little extra for chemical and electrical defenses? And with the current venue for battle, there's no chance that our spectators could be injured anyway.

Re:Coincidence

[Tackhead]

> I know, I know, the Martian Air Force strikes again, but while this is pretty solidly bad news, We've got another lander still scheduled to arrive Saturday.

Ahem. Spirit's on Mars. The MAF failed it. Give credit where it's due - this was a Martian Army operation.

The Martian Air Force gets to try and redeem themselves this weekend.

I'd say something about the Martian Marine Corps, but of course, we can't keep our damn probes working long enough to find out if the Martians need a Marine Corps.

Mars Rover Interface on Earth

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen the interface they use to control the rover. It's text based.

You are standing in an open field west of a red rock, with a crusty appearance.
There is a small mailbox here.

>open mailbox
Opening the mailbox reveals a leaflet.

>read leaflet
(taken)
"WELCOME TO MARS!

At NASA control...

[__aafutm5472]

...flight commanders are sitting around, when a small alarm goes off.

"What is it ROVER?"

"I've just picked up a fault in the AE35 unit. It's going to go 100% failure in 72 hours."

AAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!

Re:Mars Defense System

[arkhan_jg]

Nah, it's Colin Pilinger's secret plan. He's intercepted the communications link to the spirit rover, and is driving it at full speed to rescue Beagle 2!

Re:BSOD

[Anonymous Coward]

> It's the red screen of kernel panic.

It's blue. You're getting confused because NASA is changing the colours of all the pictures to satisfy stupid people.

Re:Mars Defense System

[Tablizer]

Yes, I must admit that I was hoping more than a little that this news of lost contact would be accompanied by a last few photos taken by the Spirit, showing some shadowy figures approaching the rover and posing for the camera.

here [gargaro.com]

If only it was running Windows XP

[wyluli]

Then it would REBOOT after a critical error!

Re:I found it!

[fayd]

What's the shipping on that?

Call Art Bell...

[Anonymous Coward]

Need remote viewers on this one

Don't say that

[Nynaeve]

From an article [space.com] on the same site:

Jennifer Trosper, Mission Manager for the Mars Exploration Rover project ... "The rover remains in excellent shape for trundling over to the nearby crater," Trosper said. "The spacecraft continues to amaze me. There's nothing to make me think that this vehicle isn't going to last a long time," she concluded.

Oops.

Re:A fatal exception 0E has occurred.....

[JoeRobe]

Just call Dell Support!

"What? The rover isn't responding? Well before you do anything rational, we suggest that you first reformat the hard drive, then reinstall the operating system. This should solve your problem. Have I been of assistance to you today?..."

Re:Jawas.

[CGP314]

The Jawas came along in their sandcrawler and took the rover. I've seen this before.

This is the droid we are looking for!

--
In London? Need a Physics Tutor? [colingregorypalmer.net]

American Weblog in London [colingregorypalmer.net]

Re:Let's hope its just software

[Megane]

a random series of zeroes and ones in binary code and not anything the scientists could decipher.

Ah, that would be the NSA encryption kicking in. Actually, there was one decipherable message: "I'm sorry, JPL, I can't do that."

Re:Jawas.

[feidaykin]

When asked to comment on Spirit, a local Jawa said only, "Woo-tee-tee!"

He then tried to sell a reporter an R2 unit with a bad motivator, which promptly fried before the transaction was even completed.

What really happend

[Dagvl]

SpiritOS 5.1

Login: engy1
Password: *

Welcome Master.

Do you want to play thermonuclear war?

# /usr/sbin/shutdown
Connection lost.

L33t script kiddie no 1: Whoops.

Re:not as bad as it sounds.

[Sowbug]

In the coming days, if communications are not restored, the spacecraft will enter safe modes that cause it to try harder to transmit and will reset subsystems.

They sent the second rover, Opportunity, for just this reason: to hold down the F8 key on the Spirit while it reboots.

(Oblique Windows joke.)

Re:BSOD

[itsabouttime]

I'm not sure its running anything now.

Martian Conservatives

[stuffduff]

UNIVERSAL NEWS SYNDICATE - MARS The Martain Government announced today that it has suspended any direct communication between the rover and earth until it has ascertained if any code on the rover constitutes a potential violation of SCO's IP suit. A spokesbeing for the ruling faction said off the record that the suit 'really has them turning green.' To which Darl McBride replied 'If it's green I want it!'

Re:BSOD

[Bendebecker]

VXWorks

Obviously it doesn't...

Cutting rocks

[wowbagger]

Last I'd heard, Spirit was going to sample a rock by grinding away part of the rock's surface, then imaging the patch.

So, I think what we'll find when we finally get there is a twisted mass of acid-etched metal, and burned into the ground next to it:

NO KILL I

Ensign Naraht's mother is gonna be PISSED.

Contact Re-Established!

[Picass0]

Good news - The Spirit rover has contacted JPL!

Bad News - It has detected a new device and is asking for the Windows Install CD to be inserted to continue.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Culprit Spotted!!!

[Nonsanity]

In this panoramic image [furnation.com] from Spirit, the cause of the communications problems can be clearly seen!

~ Nonsanity

Re:Mars Defense System

[seanscottrogers]

I knew comedy central was getting desperate trying to hype up battle bots, but this is just ridiculous.

It has to be done, sorry.

[SuiteSisterMary]

In 2004, Mars exploration was happening.

Nasa Engineer 1: What happen?
Nasa Engineer 2: Somebody set up us the pseudo-noise.
NE2: We get signal.
NE1: What you say?
NE2: Main screen turn on.
NE1: It's you!!!
Mars: How are you gentlemen?
Mars: All your rover are belong to us.
NE1: What you say??
Mars: You are on the way to dissolution.
Mars: You have no chance to incresase funding, make your time.
Mars: Ha ha ha!!!
Bush: Move manned mission.
NE1: You sure about this?
Bush: For great re-election,
Bush: Take off every manned mission.

Re:Damn viruses

[zCyl]

Maybe the Beagle was infected with the Slammer.

Well, Beagle's failure probably did have something to do with slamming.

Response from the rover

[Anonymous Coward]

The latest communication feed has just arrived. Strangely, the only imformation transmitted is:

> Y0ur r0v3r i5 0wn3d!

Re:Response from the rover

[oateater]

It must be hard to communicate from Texas all the way to the California Desert...er...i mean Mars.

Re:or a ferret

[Brigadier]

I had a pet ferret name Ishido, who somehow knew how to climb into a vending machine and release all sorts of goodies. I didnt' teach him this but one day at the laundry mat he snuck up into the machine in the soda tray then after a minute of calling at him about four sodas and a ferret fell out. surprisingly he could repeat the trick.

NASA engineers

[winkydink]

Q. Why do NASA engineers always get on the bottom when having sex?

A. Because they only know how to fvck up.

Re:Jawas.

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate to be picky,

I don't know why, but I really do feel that's not true.

Re:Don't worry, it's just taking a rest

[prog-guru]

OK, so the Spirit rover rolls into a bar. Rover says to the bartender 'excuse me,' bartender ignores him. Rover again says 'excuse me,' bartender ignores him. Martian says to bartender, 'Why don't you answer him?' bartender says 'I know that type, all they ever want is water.' :)

Here is a More Likely Picture

[deathcow]

Rover-jacking [eagleriver.com]

Re:not as bad as it sounds.

[DarkHelmet]

Like so [seventhcycle.net]

Yes... take the average run of the mill slashdot joke, give it a new spin... Bang! Extra Karma.