http://space.com/missionlaunches/spirit_silent_040122.html
'Serious Anomaly' Silences Mars Spirit Rover By Leonard David space.com 22 January 2004 PASADENA, Calif. -- Mars Rover officials at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced that "a serious anomaly" occured onboard the robot Spirit Wednesday. Peter Theisinger, Mars Exploration Rover project manager, began Thursday's press conference by telling reporters that they had not received contact from Spirit, either through relays from the Mars Global Surveyor or the Mars Odyssey spacecraft now orbiting the red planet. German-built Alpha-Particle-X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) is being used to determine the elemental chemistry of rocks and soils on Mars. The APXS performs elemental analyses of martian surface materials by directly touching a rock or patch of soil. Analyzing the elemental make-up of martian surface materials will provide scientists with information about crustal formation, weathering processes, and water activity on the red planet. However, Jennifer Trosper, mission manager of Surface Operations, interrupted the press briefing to announch that a signal had been recieved from the rover via its direct link to Earth. That said, no direct data had yet to be received from the robotic geologist. Theisinger explained that the situation remains serious and that "no one single fault ... that we can conceive of" can explain this anamoly. A communique' released late afternoon Wednesday from JPL indicated an unresolved issue with the status of the Spirit Mars rover. According to the statement, ground controllers were able to send commands to the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit early Wednesday and received a simple signal acknowledging that the rover heard them. However, ground controllers here did not receive expected scientific and engineering data from Spirit during scheduled communication passes during the rest of that martian day. ______________________________________________ Meteorite-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
