The flight team for NASA's Spirit received data from the rover in a communication session that began at 13:26 Universal Time (5:26 a.m. PST) and lasted 20 minutes at a data rate of 120 bits per second.
NASA says the rover is in safe mode. So hopefully it's just a software problem and they can correct it. Thanks for the updates Brent! Fingers crossed for Saturday night!
So have they determined what error caused the rover to blue screen?
------ “The most beautiful thing we can experience in life is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: for his eyes are closed.” - Albert Einstein
NASA's Spirit rover did not go to sleep today even after ground controllers sent commands twice for it to do so.
Shortly before noon, controllers were surprised to receive a relay of data from Spirit via the Mars Odyssey orbiter. Spirit sent 73 megabits at a rate of 128 kilobits per second. The transmission included power subsystem engineering data, no science data, and several frames of "fill data." Fill data are sets of intentionally random numbers that do not provide information.
Spirit had not communicated successfully through Odyssey since the rover's communications difficulties began on Wednesday.
Spirit's twin, Opportunity, will reach Mars at 05:05 Universal Time on Jan. 25 (12:05 a.m. Sunday EST or 9:05 p.m. Saturday PST) at a landing site on the opposite side of the planet from Spirit.
here is an interesting tidbit of info i've learned while watching the latest news briefing
the rover has been trying to reboot itself, i.e. doing a reset, and since wednesday it has done it about 60 times and not been successfull, like its caught in a loop
also, it has not powered down at night twice now
luckily, as a last resort, if all else fails, they can impose the default software image on the rover, basically like running norton ghost and ghosting it back to its original state, but, if its a hardware problem that caused the software to screw up, the problem will just happen all over again, so, they have to first figure out what the problem is and try to fix with what they have now
basically they just don't know whats broke yet, and it may take a couple weeks to figure it out, sadly
they are in the mindset though that spirit is not a total failure, they are thinking that they will be able to bring it back up to some level of usefullness, maybe not 100%, but some is better than none
only time will tell
and there is always oppurtunity
if you've got an hour put this into real player and watch the news briefing from friday morning: rtsp://video.c-span.org/15days/e012304_nasa2.rm
"Would you mind not standing on my chest, my hats on fire." - The Doctor
