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SF-LIT  January 2009

SF-LIT January 2009

Subject:

Mars Rover Doing Well After Memory Glitch - NYTimes.com

From:

David Chessler <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

Science Fiction and Fantasy Listserv <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 03:39:45 -0500

Content-Type:

text/plain

Parts/Attachments:

Parts/Attachments

text/plain (290 lines)

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/30/science/space/30rover.html?ref=science

January 30, 2009


Mars Rover Doing Well After Memory Glitch

By 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/kenneth_chang/index.html?inline=nyt-per>KENNETH 
CHANG

NASA’s Mars Spirit rover may be rolling again as 
soon as this weekend, although engineers remain 
perplexed as to what caused it to lose memory and 
abort an attempted drive last Sunday.

“Spirit is doing pretty good, as a matter of 
fact,” said R. William Nelson, the chief of the 
engineering team for the two Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity.

On Sunday, Spirit did not move as instructed and, 
oddly, did not keep the data recording what it 
had done. The data files are usually written to a 
part of the rover’s memory known as “flash 
memory,” which retains information even after power is turned off.

The best guess for what happened is that Spirit 
somehow slipped into what NASA engineers call the 
“cripple mode,” in which the rover avoids using 
flash memory and instead writes to so-called 
random access memory. The data may have 
disappeared when the rover went back to sleep 
after trying to execute the instructions.

This cripple mode proved invaluable during 
Spirit’s early days on Mars, when a software 
glitch caused the flash memory to overflow and 
Spirit was caught in a cycle of continually 
rebooting itself. By avoiding flash memory, 
engineers were able to troubleshoot the problem 
and send a software fix to the rover.

The hypothesis would explain Spirit’s amnesia, 
but it is not at all clear how the rover could 
have instructed itself to go into the cripple 
mode. “It’s all very mysterious at this point, 
and we may never find out what happened,” Mr. Nelson said.

The engineers are also investigating a second, 
apparently unrelated glitch: the rover thinks the 
Sun’s position in the sky is four degrees off the 
actual position. Analysis on Thursday ruled out a 
problem with the camera, and the prime suspect 
for the error is a problem with the rover’s gyroscopes.

Mr. Nelson said that the team could work around 
any problems with the gyroscopes and that the 
rover otherwise appears to be in good health.

<http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html>Copyright 
2009 <http://www.nytco.com/>The New York Times Company


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/01/29/MNN915JL6B.DTL



Mars rover may be feeling its age - finally

<mailto:[log in to unmask]>David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor

Friday, January 30, 2009

Spirit, the aged and somewhat creaky Mars rover, 
is stalled on the Red Planet with a touch of 
bewilderment, but earthbound engineers are 
confident they'll get the mobile explorer up and running smoothly soon.

The Spirit and its sister rover, Opportunity, 
landed on Mars five years ago for what was 
designed as a 90-day mission, but have far 
exceeded all expectations, exploring successfully 
on opposite sides of the planet ever since. The 
only signs of age have been a little wear on the 
wheels and problems with some of their onboard instruments.

Lately, though, the Spirit apparently is 
disoriented. The robot vehicle has failed to obey 
radio commands from Earth to start driving, and 
has been unable to find the sun, NASA scientists say.

"We may never know what went wrong up there, or 
what caused the problem," Bill Nelson, a leading 
engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 
Pasadena where Spirit and Opportunity are 
controlled, said Thursday. "But we're quite 
optimistic that it won't stop the vehicle."

Scientists and mission control engineers 
calculate that a Mars day, or "sol," is 39 
minutes and 35 seconds longer than a day on 
Earth. It was during Spirit's 1,800th sol on the 
planet Sunday that it failed to start driving. 
Two sols later, it was told to find the sun with 
its camera, but the rover was disoriented and 
reported the sun's location in the wrong place.

Communication between Earth and the rovers is 
relayed by the Mars Odyssey spacecraft, which has 
been orbiting Mars for almost nine years, and on 
Thursday Nelson and mission controllers were 
awaiting a new downlink carrying a fresh report 
from Spirit via Odyssey to help efforts at diagnosing the problems.

One possible cause of the communication problem, 
Nelson said, might be an errant cosmic ray from 
distant space that somehow sparked a glitch in 
Spirit's computer and prevented it from storing 
the proper commands from Earth and responding correctly to them.

The inability of Spirit's camera to locate the 
sun, he said, could have been a case of mistaken 
identity when it instead picked up a bright glint 
caused by the sun's reflection on one of the rover's metal body parts.

Spirit was supposed to start trundling 20 to 25 
feet this week from its present location in a 
spot on the Martian surface known as Home Plate. 
And that would precede a journey of about 900 
feet to a new location called Goddard-von Braun, 
named for rocket pioneers Robert Goddard and Wernher von Braun.

Both Spirit and Opportunity are powered by solar 
arrays, and dust storms now and then have left 
dusty films on their solar panels, Nelson said. 
This has cut power for both rovers, he said, but 
hasn't immobilized them, and once Spirit's health 
is restored, its stalled drive will start again.

Since January 2004, when they landed, Spirit has 
roamed across the Martian surface for a total of 
about 4.7 miles, and Opportunity has journeyed 
8.5 miles - not much for a human hiker, but a lot for a Mars rover.

E-mail David Perlman at 
<mailto:[log in to unmask]>[log in to unmask]

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/01/30/MNN915JL6B.DTL

This article appeared on page A - 8 of the San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle Sections
<http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/info/copyright/>© 
2009 Hearst Communications Inc.


http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,485345,00.html


Mars Rover's Bizarre Behavior Puzzles NASA

Thursday , January 29, 2009


By Tariq Malik


NASA engineers are scratching their heads over 
some unexpected behavior from the long-lived 
Spirit rover, which began its sixth year exploring Mars this month.

Spirit failed to report in to engineers at NASA's 
Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, 
Calif., last weekend, prompting a series of 
diagnostic tests this week to hunt the glitch's source.

The 
<http://www.space.com/common/media/video/player.php?videoRef=SP_090128_spirit&mode=>aging 
Mars rover did not beam home a record of its 
weekend activities and, more puzzlingly, 
apparently failed to even record any of its 
actions on Sunday, mission managers said.

"We don't have a good explanation yet for the way 
Spirit has been acting for the past few days," 
said NASA's Sharon Laubach, who leads the JPL 
team that that writes and checks commands for the 
rover and its robotic twin Opportunity. "Our next 
steps will be diagnostic activities."

Sunday marked Spirit's 1,800th Martian day, or 
sol, exploring a region known as "Home Plate" in 
the planet's expansive Gusev Crater.

Spirit and its twin Opportunity were initially 
expected to spend just 90 days exploring the 
Martian surface when they landed in succession 
<http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/090103-mars-rovers-fifth-anniversary.html>more 
than five years ago this month. Opportunity is 
currently headed for the 
<http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/080923-mars-rover-crater.html>monster 
crater Endeavour on the other side of Mars.

On Sunday, Spirit apparently received commands to 
drive to its next waypoint, but failed to move an inch, mission managers said.

While that glitch can have any number of causes, 
such as Spirit not properly perceiving it was 
ready to drive, the rover's failure to record its 
daily work in its non-volatile computer memory is perplexing, they added.

By Monday, Spirit's mission controllers decided 
to tell the rover to find the sun with its camera 
on Tuesday to determine its location on Mars.

Early Tuesday, the rover beamed back that it had 
tried to follow the instructions of its human 
handlers, but couldn't find the sun.

NASA engineers believe Spirit's woes may be due 
to a transitory cause, such as a high-energy 
cosmic ray hitting the rover's electronics. On 
Tuesday, the rover's non-volatile memory appeared 
to be working fine, mission managers said.

The rovers Spirit and Opportunity have lasted 
more than 20 times their initial three-month 
mission plan, with each suffering from aches and 
pains associated with their longevity.

Spirit initially bounced back from a worrying 
computer glitch early in its mission and has 
since 
<http://www.space.com/news/081112-mars-rover-spirit.html>survived 
frigid winters on Mars and scaled a nearby hill. 
Both rovers have expanded scientists' knowledge 
of the history of liquid water on Mars during their respective missions.

While puzzling, Spirit's new glitches don't 
appear to be a serious concern at present, 
according to NASA's rover mission chief John Callas.

"Right now, Spirit is under normal sequence 
control, reporting good health and responsive to 
commands from the ground," he added.

Copyright © 2009 Imaginova Corp. All Rights 
Reserved. This material may not be published, 
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

© Associated Press. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Copyright 2009 FOX News Network, LLC


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<http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,479997,00.html>Clouds 
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<http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,479873,00.html>Strange 
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<http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/space/>• Click 
here to visit FOXNews.com's Space Center.
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