Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

MER Spirt malfunctioning

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • MER Spirt malfunctioning

    Yesterday morning they uplinked the days instructions and apparently something went wrong somewhere in the rovers software and/or hardware.

    They aren't sure if the entire high-gain transmission was received correctly due to rain in Canberra but the software on the rover does error checking on the data so that it wouldn't attempt to run the sequence if any parts were faulty. They had received a UHF carrier signal (the same type that was used during entry to indicate various stages) that indicated that it had received instructions, but other than that no other useful communications were sent back.

    Later either the MGS or Odyssey orbiters (I forget which) received a much shorter than expected 2.5 minute UHF signal that contained no data, indicating the radio had been activated by the computers but wasn't being sent actual information.

    A short while ago they send a 7.5 bps command to ask the rover to indicate it's status, and it sent a UHF carrier that indicated it was in fault mode, which does at least mean that the receiver, computer, and transmitters are working at least partialy.

  • #2
    I hope some Martian teenager didn't mistake it for a turtle and flip the dang thing on it's back.
    chuck
    Chuck
    秋音的爸爸

    Comment


    • #3
      This is the most complete story I've been able to find.

      chuck
      Chuck
      秋音的爸爸

      Comment


      • #4
        Damn Martians!

        oh well if this got ****ed up they have another Oppertunty with the other lander in a week or two.
        Why is it called tourist season, if we can't shoot at them?

        Comment


        • #5
          The CBS article has my favorite "lets's not frighten the public with technical terms" line: "Electronic brain."

          Comment


          • #6
            geee... all those faild mitions remind me of 2010: the year we made contact.. or something like that..... where the jovian moon eropa becomes off limit to humans..... either that or the bofins at nasa and the esa are overlooking something big....
            "They say that dreams are real only as long as they last. Couldn't you say the same thing about life?"

            Comment


            • #7
              I wonder if they use exactly the same software.
              I bet there is a team of programmers that won't get any sleep between now and Sunday morning.
              Or even later...
              chuck
              Chuck
              秋音的爸爸

              Comment


              • #8
                well, looks like we are back to a 20:15 score for mars then.



                mfg
                wulfman
                "Perhaps they communicate by changing colour? Like those sea creatures .."
                "Lobsters?"
                "Really? I didn't know they did that."
                "Oh yes, red means help!"

                Comment


                • #9
                  er... that would be 21:15..... and if you take the beagle into acount then the score should realy be 22:14.....
                  "They say that dreams are real only as long as they last. Couldn't you say the same thing about life?"

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Well, it's not certain yet that it's down for the count.

                    I guess an analogy might be if you were running a web server on your home PC and after uploading new content you get a 404 message and then nothing at all. But when you ping your PC you still got an echo, thus you know your computer is still there and that your house didn't burn down or something, but that there is still a problem.
                    Last edited by Jon P. Inghram; 22 January 2004, 12:56.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      You mean this is just a bandwith issue?

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Originally posted by SpiralDragon
                        er... that would be 21:15..... and if you take the beagle into acount then the score should realy be 22:14.....
                        I was thinking of not giving up spirit yet. but you are correct on beagle, it's unlikely he will rise from the dead.

                        mfg
                        wulfman
                        "Perhaps they communicate by changing colour? Like those sea creatures .."
                        "Lobsters?"
                        "Really? I didn't know they did that."
                        "Oh yes, red means help!"

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          That's the spirit

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Originally posted by SitFlyer
                            You mean this is just a bandwith issue?
                            No, it just means that the rover didn't totally crap out, it's still working at least enough to say "I'm still here." If they're lucky it may just be a software glitch which hopefully would be easy to fix. The 7.5 bps signal was sent at that speed because that's the speed the rovers UHF comm system drops down to if it gets configured into a fault recovery mode.
                            Last edited by Jon P. Inghram; 22 January 2004, 13:13.

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              It may be that a reboot would just fix it. But until they know what the problem is, they don't want to burn that much battery power.
                              Gigabyte P35-DS3L with a Q6600, 2GB Kingston HyperX (after *3* bad pairs of Crucial Ballistix 1066), Galaxy 8800GT 512MB, SB X-Fi, some drives, and a Dell 2005fpw. Running WinXP.

                              Comment

                              Working...
                              X