Re: [meteorite-list] Spirit Remains In 'Critical' Condition
The first priority is to get the rover out of this continuous reboot mode. There was concern about the battery management during these constant reboots. The rover was commanded into a special 'crippled' mode, and this has been successfully achieved. We are now downloading engineering data from the rover to determine the true extent of the rover's health and status. Ron Baalke __ Meteorite-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
[meteorite-list] Spirit Remains In 'Critical' Condition
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/040123recovery.html Spirit remains in 'critical' condition BY WILLIAM HARWOOD STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS SPACE PLACE USED WITH PERMISSION January 23, 2004 The crippled Spirit rover remains in critical condition on the surface of Mars, engineers said today, the victim of ongoing electronic seizures that have caused its central computer to reboot itself more than 60 times over the past two days. Engineers successfully coaxed the rover to beam back limited engineering data during two brief communications sessions and they were relieved to discover the spacecraft's power system was providing the necessary life support. But Spirit's state of mind was clearly - and unusually - different in both sessions, ruling out any simple explanations for what might have gone wrong. We have a serious problem, said project manager Pete Theisinger. The fact that we've got a vehicle that we believe is stable for an extensive period of time will give us time to work that problem. We can command it to talk to us and even though we get perhaps limited information, we do get good information and that helps us work through the problem. I expect that we will get functionality back out of this rover. I think the chances that it will be perfect again, I would think, are not good. The chances that it will not work at all, I think are also low. I think we're somewhere in that broad middle and we need to understand the problem to find out exactly where we are. Spirit went on the blink Wednesday as it was carrying out a procedure to calibrate drive motors used by its thermal emission spectrometer. Prior to that moment, everything was operating normally. But some event, possibly a hardware failure of some sort, threw the rover's electronic brain for a loop. Since then, the spacecraft has been in a state of limbo, responding in unusual fashion to anxious flight controllers. This morning, we sent an early beep to the spacecraft and did not get a response, Theisinger said. As we were preparing to send a second, the spacecraft talked to us. We got very fractional frames and then moved very quickly to ask it to speak to us for 30 minutes at 120 bits per second. We got 20 minutes of transmission in that occasion, which was a single frame of engineering data repeated. Then we repeated that full sequence of events and we got about 15 minutes of engineering data at 120 bits per second where the frames were updated for 15 minutes and then for the second 15 minutes we had nothing but fill data. He said Spirit has been in a processor reset loop of some type, mostly since Wednesday, we believe, where the processor wakes up, loads the flight software, uncovers a condition that would cause it to reset. But the processor doesn't do that immediately. It waits for a period of time - at the beginning of the day it waits for 15 minutes twice and then for the rest of the day it waits for an hour - and then it resets and comes back up. Complicating the work to track down the problem, the indications we have on two occasions is that the thing that causes the reset is not always perceived to be the same, Theisinger said. We are confused by that, but that's the facts as we presume them to be right now. The reset sequence, similar to repeatedly unplugging one's personal computer and forcing it to restart, began Wednesday morning on Mars when a calibration of the spectrometer motors ended prematurely. An anomaly team has been formed to study the telemetry and to decide what readings to request from Spirit to help narrow down the range of possible failures. I think we should expect that we will not be restoring functionality to Spirit for a significant period of time, Theisinger said, I think many days, perhaps a couple of weeks, even in the best of circumstances, from what we see today. In the meantime, he said, Spirit remains in critical condition. We do not know to what extent we can restore functionality to the system because we don't know what's broke, Theisinger said. We don't know what started this chain of events and I think, personally, that it's a sequence of things, and we don't know, therefore, the consequences of that. I think its difficult at this very preliminary stage to assume we did not have some type of hardware event that caused this to start and therefore, we don't know to what extent we can work around that hardware event and to what extent we can get the software to ignore that hardware event if that's what we eventually have to do. We've got a long way to go here with the patient in intensive care. But we have been able to establish that we can command it, and we have been able to establish that it can give us information and we have been able to establish that the power system is good and we're thermally OK and those are all very, very important pieces of information. We are a long, long way from being done here, but we do have serious problems and our ability to
Re: [meteorite-list] Spirit Remains In 'Critical' Condition
I have two theories, Spirit was hit my a meteorite, although a small target on a big planet, it is more likely than the next theories, Spriit was attacked by Martians! Thanks, Tom Peregrineflier IMCA 6168 - Original Message - From: Ron Baalke [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Meteorite Mailing List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, January 23, 2004 2:50 PM Subject: [meteorite-list] Spirit Remains In 'Critical' Condition http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/040123recovery.html Spirit remains in 'critical' condition BY WILLIAM HARWOOD STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS SPACE PLACE USED WITH PERMISSION January 23, 2004 The crippled Spirit rover remains in critical condition on the surface of Mars, engineers said today, the victim of ongoing electronic seizures that have caused its central computer to reboot itself more than 60 times over the past two days. Engineers successfully coaxed the rover to beam back limited engineering data during two brief communications sessions and they were relieved to discover the spacecraft's power system was providing the necessary life support. But Spirit's state of mind was clearly - and unusually - different in both sessions, ruling out any simple explanations for what might have gone wrong. We have a serious problem, said project manager Pete Theisinger. The fact that we've got a vehicle that we believe is stable for an extensive period of time will give us time to work that problem. We can command it to talk to us and even though we get perhaps limited information, we do get good information and that helps us work through the problem. I expect that we will get functionality back out of this rover. I think the chances that it will be perfect again, I would think, are not good. The chances that it will not work at all, I think are also low. I think we're somewhere in that broad middle and we need to understand the problem to find out exactly where we are. Spirit went on the blink Wednesday as it was carrying out a procedure to calibrate drive motors used by its thermal emission spectrometer. Prior to that moment, everything was operating normally. But some event, possibly a hardware failure of some sort, threw the rover's electronic brain for a loop. Since then, the spacecraft has been in a state of limbo, responding in unusual fashion to anxious flight controllers. This morning, we sent an early beep to the spacecraft and did not get a response, Theisinger said. As we were preparing to send a second, the spacecraft talked to us. We got very fractional frames and then moved very quickly to ask it to speak to us for 30 minutes at 120 bits per second. We got 20 minutes of transmission in that occasion, which was a single frame of engineering data repeated. Then we repeated that full sequence of events and we got about 15 minutes of engineering data at 120 bits per second where the frames were updated for 15 minutes and then for the second 15 minutes we had nothing but fill data. He said Spirit has been in a processor reset loop of some type, mostly since Wednesday, we believe, where the processor wakes up, loads the flight software, uncovers a condition that would cause it to reset. But the processor doesn't do that immediately. It waits for a period of time - at the beginning of the day it waits for 15 minutes twice and then for the rest of the day it waits for an hour - and then it resets and comes back up. Complicating the work to track down the problem, the indications we have on two occasions is that the thing that causes the reset is not always perceived to be the same, Theisinger said. We are confused by that, but that's the facts as we presume them to be right now. The reset sequence, similar to repeatedly unplugging one's personal computer and forcing it to restart, began Wednesday morning on Mars when a calibration of the spectrometer motors ended prematurely. An anomaly team has been formed to study the telemetry and to decide what readings to request from Spirit to help narrow down the range of possible failures. I think we should expect that we will not be restoring functionality to Spirit for a significant period of time, Theisinger said, I think many days, perhaps a couple of weeks, even in the best of circumstances, from what we see today. In the meantime, he said, Spirit remains in critical condition. We do not know to what extent we can restore functionality to the system because we don't know what's broke, Theisinger said. We don't know what started this chain of events and I think, personally, that it's a sequence of things, and we don't know, therefore, the consequences of that. I think its difficult at this very preliminary stage to assume we did not have some type of hardware event that caused this to start and therefore, we don't know to what extent we can work around that hardware event and to what extent we can get the software to ignore that hardware event if that's what we
Re: [meteorite-list] Spirit Remains In 'Critical' Condition
I have two theories, Spirit was hit my a meteorite, although a small target on a big planet, it is more likely than the next theories, Spriit was attacked by Martians! Or maybe Spirit was attacked by Martians with meteorites. :-) Ron __ Meteorite-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
RE: [meteorite-list] Spirit Remains In 'Critical' Condition
Hehe. Personally, I think that this reboot-loop is caused by a short-circuit somewhere. BTW - one of the astonishing findings of ESA is that Mars seems to be much warmer than thought. They expected -120°C to -30°C, but instead they found the temperature is +4°C. Don't know where this temperature was encountered, but if it's true, it seems that we have a LOT to learn about Mars (and that conditions are more favorable to former (or existing?) life than thought. I read somewhere that the orbit of Mars is much more changing over time than that of earth, and that Mars could have been much warmer a long time ago because of that. Hell, I wish I could be born in 20 years from now :-) Bernhard -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ron Baalke Sent: Friday, January 23, 2004 11:25 PM To: Meteorite Mailing List Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Spirit Remains In 'Critical' Condition I have two theories, Spirit was hit my a meteorite, although a small target on a big planet, it is more likely than the next theories, Spriit was attacked by Martians! Or maybe Spirit was attacked by Martians with meteorites. :-) Ron __ Meteorite-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list __ Meteorite-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
