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Space Science

Spirit Rover Communications Error 824

Posted by michael from the abort-retry-ignore dept.
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?"
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Spirit Rover Communications Error More

Spirit Rover Communications Error

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  • Mars Defense System (Score:3, Funny)

    by pvt_medic ( 715692 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:24PM (#8057289)
    chalk another one up for the mars defense system.

  • Opportunity (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Kiriwas ( 627289 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:24PM (#8057291) Homepage
    I'm really praying for Opportunity now. We may really need that rover if some good data is to come out of these missions.

    • Re:Opportunity (Score:3, Insightful)

      by pvt_medic ( 715692 )
      pity, NASA really needs a success that this mission was turning into. They cant afford another big failure (granted this is only part of the mission and the sister rover is scheduled to land soon) but its a black eye to an already bruised image.

  • I found it! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:24PM (#8057295)
    On www.ebay.mars/landers/used.

  • BSOD (Score:5, Funny)

    by Augusto ( 12068 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:24PM (#8057298) Homepage
    Somewhere in Mars, a little robot has a screen with the Blue Screen of Death.

  • WHen we finally get humans there.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Maeryk ( 87865 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:24PM (#8057306) Journal
    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

  • not as bad as it sounds. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mlyle ( 148697 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:25PM (#8057307)
    A considerable number of things have to work properly for the rover to be in its present state. Mars Global Surveyor received a carrier on UHF but no data, confirming that the UHF antenna, amplifier, and tranmitter are functional. The fact that it transmitted at the correct time (at night) indicates batteries and power systems are at least mostly functional, and that the spacecraft computer/avionics system was able to calculate the time of the MGS pass.

    Also, NASA's DSN (Deep Space Network) has been able to send commands asking Spirit to send tones on X-Band, and has received the response tones back. This confirms that at least the low gain antenna, antenna switch, x-band receiver, and x-band tone transmitter are functional.

    Perhaps a software fault or a synchronization problem with the radios is preventing valid daa frames from being transmitted. The fact that so much is known to functional argues against a failure that will incapacitate the spacecraft indefinitely. 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. I am optimistic at this point.

    • Re:not as bad as it sounds. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by blair1q ( 305137 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:32PM (#8057467) Journal
      By now they have probably rebooted it (forced it through safe mode to clear any software fault; space vehicles never really go all the way "down"), so if it's still happenning I would say it's either a hardware fault or corruption of essential software or data in (putatively) nonvolatile memory (not unreasonable in high-rad environments).

      If it is corruption of secondary memory, and since they can send valid commands, presumably they can attempt to upload new data/code to fix it.

      If they haven't forced it through safe mode, then they're not too worried and are more interested in characterizing the problem than getting on with the scientific mission. Which is a good or a bad thing depending on which sort of information is more valuable. I'm sure the guys in the software group have their bias.

      • Re:not as bad as it sounds. (Score:5, Informative)

        by mlyle ( 148697 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:35PM (#8057519)
        By now they have probably rebooted it (forced it through safe mode to clear any software fault; space vehicles never really go all the way "down"), so if it's still happenning I would say it's either a hardware fault or corruption of essential software or data in (putatively) nonvolatile memory (not unreasonable in high-rad environments).

        Not impossible, but relatively unlikely with deep-space grade hardware. It'd require a double fault to create a detectable error, and more than that to create an undetectable one.

        If they haven't forced it through safe mode, then they're not too worried and are more interested in characterizing the problem than getting on with the scientific mission. Which is a good or a bad thing depending on which sort of information is more valuable. I'm sure the guys in the software group have their bias.

        They've had one day, and much of that was spent thinking the problem was because of thunderstorms/atmospheric vapor near Canberra and dish tracking problems were causing communications errors. It's important to get some idea of the problem before you go shoving things into safe modes because you may make things worse (if it's a power bus fault, for instance).

    • Re:not as bad as it sounds. (Score:5, Funny)

      by FreshFunk510 ( 526493 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:34PM (#8057500)
      "Perhaps a software fault ...

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

    • Re:not as bad as it sounds. (Score:5, Funny)

      by GMontag ( 42283 ) <gmontag AT guymontag DOT com> on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:37PM (#8057541) Homepage Journal
      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:not as bad as it sounds. (Score:5, Funny)

      by Waffle Iron ( 339739 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @03:03PM (#8057939)
      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:not as bad as it sounds. (Score:5, Funny)

      by Sowbug ( 16204 ) * on Thursday January 22, 2004 @04:21PM (#8059036) Homepage

      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.)

  • A fatal exception 0E has occurred..... (Score:5, Funny)

    by flinxmeister ( 601654 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:25PM (#8057315) Homepage
    Please restart your rover. If the problem persists, contact support@nasa.gov.

  • Ha ha (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:25PM (#8057316)
    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!

  • Let's hope its just software (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:25PM (#8057326)
    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

    It sounds like we still have power and an antenna. Hopefully its just some software error will need a reboot to correct the problem. I think they were late debugging this stuff and actually had to upload the software after the launch. Maybe they missed something.

    The only issue I heard was some voltage spikes when the high-gain antenna was rotated. They were not reproduced but perhaps some underlying problem has occurred.

    Up to now, NASA has made this look so easy. This is a wake-up call. Putting robots unto another planet is still an epic achievement and so much is left to go wrong even after the landing is over.

    Let's hope this is just a red screen of death and a reboot will shake things loose.

  • Soil Science is so interesting. (Score:3, Funny)

    by glrotate ( 300695 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:25PM (#8057328) Homepage
    A great article about it over here. [confusionroad.com]

  • Radio update (Score:3, Informative)

    by Wingchild ( 212447 ) <brian.kern@gmail.com> on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:26PM (#8057334)
    The newsflash I heard over the radio at lunch quoted someone (didn't catch a name) as saying that, at present, Spirit wasn't even relaying telemetry data -- so for the time being they've no way to even tell what happened, let alone how to fix it.

    I hope that they track it down and can fix it easily; Spirit was one of the coolest things going in recent weeks, and was providing a welcome break from all the election primary coverage.

    I also really hope we don't degenerate into a `hah, you laughed at Beagle, now it's your turn` style flamewar. Hell, I'll actually settle for one or the other. :)

  • Not The End Of The World (Score:5, Informative)

    by Henry V .009 ( 518000 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:26PM (#8057353) Journal
    From the press release: similar events occurred several times during the Mars Pathfinder mission So a friendly "Don't Panic."

  • Last Transmission (Score:5, Funny)

    by da3dAlus ( 20553 ) <dustin.grau@gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]> on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:26PM (#8057357) Homepage Journal
    "Oh Goody! My Illudiom Pew36 Explosive Space Modulator!"
    [end carrier]

  • Check it out... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Mz6 ( 741941 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:27PM (#8057372) Journal
    I found this not too long ago [nasa.gov]... It's a simulated bird's eye view from MER-B or the Opportunity Rover looking at Mars. It's supposed to land at around 9 PM PST on January 24.

    I sure hope this does better than some of the others so far.. Otherwise we might already know it's fate.

  • Conspiracy Theory (Score:5, Funny)

    by jpsst34 ( 582349 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:27PM (#8057377) Journal
    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.

  • Nothing to see here, move along (Score:3, Insightful)

    by forkazoo ( 138186 ) <<wrosecrans> <at> <gmail.com>> on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:28PM (#8057381) Homepage
    AFAICT, this is not a Big Deal. They recieved acknolegement from the rover, they just haven't heard anything since. It's certainly possible it went haywire, and flipped itself over, and is now just doomed, but it seems unlikely. Sojourner managed to survive comms glitches, and I'm sure this buggy will, too. Hell, it's not like dropped packets are unheard of on the Internet, and we still manage to read slashdot every day.

    I suppose if I was ambitious, this would be a good time for a joke about sSFGKJL%% NO CARRIER

  • The most annoying thing... (Score:5, Funny)

    by CausticPuppy ( 82139 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:29PM (#8057397)
    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.

    • Re:The most annoying thing... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:58PM (#8057861)
      In related news, SETI@Home has deciphered it's first alien message, it read:

      "Which one's the any key?"

    • you joke (Score:4, Interesting)

      by morcheeba ( 260908 ) * on Thursday January 22, 2004 @04:02PM (#8058813) Journal
      But one of our first satellites (I worked for a very small satellite firm) had a debug terminal for informational messages it spat out as it ran. No, we never expected to receive a keypress on this terminal... but we did most of our testing with this terminal because if something went wrong, we'd want to be able to see the error messages.

      When we tried to run the satellite without the terminal, the low level hardware CTS/DTR loopback wasn't present and the satellite hung when it tried to send its first character to the console. We caught that only a couple weeks before shipping the thing, too!

  • certainly the communications software. (Score:5, Funny)

    by fireduck ( 197000 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:30PM (#8057415)
    given that NASA uses real player [nasa.gov] for their briefings, they're probably just stuck waiting for the "buffering..." message to finish.

  • Newsconferece replays (Score:5, Informative)

    by rufey ( 683902 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:30PM (#8057421)
    NASA TV is replaying the news conference from this morning. They have replayed it twice so far.

    Its been reported that a signal was sent to Spirit this morning to try and figure out whether it was in fault mode or not, and preliminary results suggest that Spirit is in fault mode. This is preliminary data and was announced half way through the news conference.

    There is as of yet no reliable information as to what the state of Spirit is.

  • No offence to the original submitter (Score:5, Funny)

    by ghettoboy22 ( 723339 ) * <scott.a.johnson@gmail.com> on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:30PM (#8057432) Homepage
    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!""

  • Bush knew about this in advance! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:32PM (#8057465)
    Now he can justify that manned mission to Mars: Someone has to go press Ctrl-Alt-Delete on Spirit to reboot it!

  • Somewhere deep in the bowels of NASA (Score:5, Funny)

    by g-san ( 93038 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:36PM (#8057523)
    Is one really smart pissed of engineer saying I TOLD YOU THIS WAS GONNA HAPPEN.

  • Maybe Garbled Commands? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cflorio ( 604840 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:36PM (#8057530) Homepage
    "A rainstorm in Australia yesterday interfered with commands being uplinked to Spirit. At that time, the spacecraft sent a short signal indicating it had received the instructions but engineers said the strength of the uplink was much lower than desired and that not all of the commands got through."

    Is it at all possible that getting half commands or garbled commands has confused Sprit?

  • If we can't communicate with Spirit . . . (Score:5, Funny)

    by StefanJ ( 88986 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:41PM (#8057606) Homepage Journal
    . . . 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

  • BOT WARS (Score:5, Funny)

    by Maeryk ( 87865 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:42PM (#8057633) Journal
    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

  • Beagle (Score:5, Insightful)

    by feidaykin ( 158035 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:43PM (#8057644) Journal
    First let me say I hope this problem is fixed. Next let me say even if it is not, Spirit has done some wonderful things already and that sure beats going boom before it ever lands like so many before it.

    Now I'm going to say this: would all the people that bragged about NASA/JPL doing so much better than the Beagle team be quiet?

    Guess what. Landing a complex machine on another planet is not easy. It's simply amazing humans can even do this at all. When something goes wrong, we can't exactly reach out and tap the little thing a few times to see if it fixes it.

    The teams behind both Spirit and Beagle did excellent work against the insane list of Things That Can Go Wrong in getting something from here to there. Both teams did their best, and both teams make me feel very proud of the human race.

    • Re:Beagle (Score:5, Insightful)

      by barzok ( 26681 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @03:17PM (#8058166)
      Now I'm going to say this: would all the people that bragged about NASA/JPL doing so much better than the Beagle team be quiet?
      I have not been one of those people, but NASA/JPL still got the hardest part right - they successfully landed and operated the rover for a few days (and got good data back), rather than losing it entirely and never knowing what happened to it.

      Touchdown is the most dangerous, hardest part of the operation to get right. Beagle didn't do that (we assume), Spirit did. Beagle got to the vicinity of the planet - but we've been successful many times in hurling an object at Mars and getting it in the neighborhood.

  • Now they know (Score:5, Funny)

    by WormholeFiend ( 674934 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:43PM (#8057658)
    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

  • From the webcast (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Cat_Byte ( 621676 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:44PM (#8057672) Journal
    They were just saying there are many sequences of events that could cause this. If it sensed the battery was overly discharged it will stop sending data & wait for a recharge. It could be as simple as this.

  • Last transmission.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by iamsure ( 66666 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:47PM (#8057698) Homepage
    I@$hri89&Q24gtr24gr

    Which translated to..

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

  • It's a conspiracy, I say! A c-o-n-... spiracy! (Score:5, Funny)

    by hesiod ( 111176 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:49PM (#8057739)
    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.)

  • ping went out and the pong came back (Score:5, Informative)

    by chongo ( 113839 ) * on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:56PM (#8057834) Homepage Journal
    According to mission manager Jennifer Trosper at the end of their 1810 UTC (22 Jan 2004) news conference:

    "
    If the spacecraft believes it's in a fault mode, its command rate should be 7.8 bits per second. We sent a beep today, this morning, about the time that we came down here to talk to you. We sent a command that says if you get this send us a beep. And I'm told from Richard that Jennifer came down here to tell us that they think they got it! That would tell us that the spacecraft thinks it's in the fault side of the tree some how for some reason. That would mean that we have got positive power, some elements of the software is working, once again the Xband system is working ... the SSPA, the multispace transponder, all that stuff is working so that would be more information .. good news. We need to confirm that. Data off the DSN sometimes needs double checking. We'll let you know if that's for sure."

    Stay tuned ...

  • Spirit status updates (Score:5, Informative)

    by feidaykin ( 158035 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:59PM (#8057881) Journal
    Spirit status updates are here: http://spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/statustextonly .html [spaceflightnow.com]

  • new hires at nasa (Score:5, Funny)

    by bilbobuggins ( 535860 ) <`moc.tnujtnuj' `ta' `snigguboblib'> on Thursday January 22, 2004 @03:00PM (#8057897)
    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!'

  • The last theory I heard... (Score:5, Funny)

    by switcha ( 551514 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @03:03PM (#8057931)
    was there there was a malfunction between the table saw blade and the Speak & Spell.

  • What does the Spirit OS look like? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bshroyer ( 21524 ) <<bret> <at> <bretshroyer.org>> on Thursday January 22, 2004 @03:05PM (#8057961)
    Or, more clearly, what do the operating routines look like? Does anyone have a flowchart that would show the data flow? What sort of error checking is done on incoming data? What sort of encryption is done on incoming/outgoing data? (Cartoon bubble: I picture a script kiddie with a powerful transmitter sending SQL injection to Spirit...)

    What does the system do if it determines it has had an unexpected result/crash? How is such a system designed and tested?

    I've never thought about it before - but a system like this must have redundant levels of i/o security, internal error checking, exception trapping, and some sort of self-repair, all built within multiply redundant systems.

    Would any details of the embedded system architecture / program structure be available to the public?

  • Mars Rover Interface on Earth (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 22, 2004 @03:24PM (#8058276)
    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!

  • INFORMATION ON THE PATHFINDER/SOJOURNER FAULT: (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Featureless ( 599963 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @03:46PM (#8058576) Journal
    I thought it would be interesting to dig up and re-read the accounts from the last time there was a "serious" software glitch on the ground on Mars:
    There's a lot of rumor and inconclusive news about Spirit floating around right now, so this is entirely subjective, but I'm getting the feeling this, too, is a software fault of some kind. Put most simply, you could interpret what we're reading right now as "we received the ACK tone for our instructions but didn't get the data back we expected."

    These kinds of problems are not unprecedented, and furthermore I'm under the impression there are options for dealing with even serious OS-level trouble that would shock and awe the average general purpose computer user.

  • Don't say that (Score:5, Funny)

    by Nynaeve ( 163450 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @03:58PM (#8058757)
    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.

  • Wouldn't It Be Nice.... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by reallocate ( 142797 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @04:24PM (#8059073)
    ...to have an engineer on scene to fix it.

    Robots are great until they break.

  • Martian Conservatives (Score:5, Funny)

    by stuffduff ( 681819 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @04:27PM (#8059104) Journal
    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!'

  • Contact Re-Established! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Picass0 ( 147474 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @04:44PM (#8059333) Homepage Journal

    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.

  • Update 4:00PM EST (Score:5, Informative)

    by Phaid ( 938 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @05:17PM (#8059685) Homepage
    As reported on spaceflightnow.com [spaceflightnow.com],
    As project officials reported at the end of today's news conference, Mission Control received a radio signal from Spirit just before 12 noon EST. This simple message from the rover confirms it had received a transmission from Earth, and encourages engineers since it proves that Spirit is still alive and functioning.
    So we'll see, this does confirm that at least they can ping it.

  • remember pathfinder in 97? (Score:5, Informative)

    by goon ( 2774 ) <peterrenshaw@sel ... al.com minus bsd> on Thursday January 22, 2004 @05:27PM (#8059781) Homepage Journal
    • But a few days into the mission, not long after Pathfinder started gathering meteorological data, the spacecraft began experiencing total system resets, each resulting in losses of data.

    Pathfinder [nasa.gov] in it's 1997 landing (04JUL1997) suffered a series of unexplained system failures [kohala.com]. David Wilner CTO of WindRiver Systems [windriver.com], the creators of WxWorks the realtime embedded system kernel talked to IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium at a later date explaining how they solved software bugs in the system.

    • leaving the "debugging" facilities in the system saved the day

    this article [kohala.com] explains how they solved the problem - by including the debug code with the os. I remember reading about this on /. some time ago. A detailed account can be read here [microsoft.com] by Glenn Reeves (JPL Mars Flight SE).

    Windriver systems is supplying [windriver.com] the OS for the current mission. Lets see how long it takes them to work this one out :)


    links:
    www.kohala.com/start/papers.others/pathfinder.html [kohala.com]
    research.microsoft.com/~mbj/Mars_Pathfinder/Author itative_Account.html [microsoft.com]

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