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| At a packed press conference on Jan. 23 at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., Wayne Lee (from left), Miguel San Martin and Adam Steltzner, all of NASA, and Mike Malin, of the Mars Global Surveyor, describe precisely how Spirit landed on Jan. 3 Photo: Blaine P. Friedlander Jr./Cornell News ServiceCopyright © Cornell University |
"It talked back, and in this case talking back is a good thing," said Jim Bell, Cornell associate professor of astronomy, who is the principal scientist for the rover's panoramic cameras, or Pancams. "The rover's software is a little confused so I'm not alarmed, as these kinds of things are typical. Up to now, we've been spoiled on this mission, but this anomaly reminds everyone how fragile rover is -- in that it's 100 million miles away in a hostile environment."
Meanwhile, Spirit's twin rover, Opportunity, is on track for a Sunday (Jan. 25) 12:05 Eastern Time landing in Meridiani Planum, on the opposite side of Mars. JPL managers say that Opportunity is a "healthy spacecraft."
Spirit's problems were causing increasing anxiety when, at 5:02 a.m. Pacific time today, the flight team, via the NASA Deep Space Network antenna near Madrid, Spain, commanded the rover to send back a signal.
Spirit complied. The rover flight team received a short signal at 5:26 a.m. Pacific Time lasting 20 minutes. Its data rate was 120 bits per second, considered high-speed for 100 million miles away.
Pete Theisinger, the rover mission's project manager, addressing a press conference Friday morning in Pasadena, said that engineers believe the problem is a software glitch. "The flight software has not been behaving normally."
Since Wednesday, the engineers have tried to reset -- or reboot -- Spirit's onboard computer more than 60 times, said Theisinger.
Comparing Spirit to a hospital patient, Theisinger said the rover was in critical condition. "We do not know how we are going to restore full functionality to the [rover's] system," he said. "We've got a long way to go with this patient in intensive care."
While Theisinger and other mission managers addressed a large group of international media, NASA engineers met to try to understand the problem. Theisinger said that many options were available, but the Spirit's batteries would not die -- effectively buying time to solve the problem.
Knowing that Spirit's batteries could be replenished buys time for the engineers. "This will give us time to work the problem and let the engineers chew on it," Theisinger quipped. "The engineers are off chewing."
When will Spirit start moving? Theisinger does not know, but told the press conference, "Expect us to be in this mode for several days, because I think it will take days -- or even weeks -- to restore Spirit."
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