14 DAY TRIAL // Officials at NASA have recently announced that the tiny Mars exploration rover (MER) Spirit is in doubtful “health,” on account of the fact that readings coming in from the robot have revealed that the craft has rebooted its onboard computers twice over the last weekend. Engineers and mission specialists at the American space agency are currently working around the clock to discover what has gone wrong and why the five-year-old machine is acting the way it does.
“While we don't have an explanation yet, we do know that Spirit's batteries are charged, the solar arrays are producing energy and temperatures are well within allowable ranges. We have time to respond carefully and investigate this thoroughly. The rover is in a stable operations state called auto-mode and taking care of itself. It could stay in this stable mode for some time if necessary while we diagnose the problem,” MER Project Manager John Callas, from the NASA-operated Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), in Pasadena, California, said.
Spirit “communicated” with the JPL on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, but, at times, its transmissions were very irregular. Apparently, the moments in which the computer glitches manifested themselves coincided with those in which the high-gain dish antenna was used. Experts are not concerned about this fault, because this antenna is not the only means of communication they have with the rover. Other options include relaying messages through one of the Mars orbiters, or even using the rover's low-gain antenna for the job. Experts shared that the UHF (ultra-high frequency) transceiver on the robot was also an option.
“To avoid potential problems using the pointable antenna, we might consider for the time being just communicating by UHF relay or using the low-gain antenna. We are aware of the reality that we have an aging rover, and there may be age-related effects here,” Callas continued. Ever since the Spirit and Opportunity twin robots exceeded their planned mission times, new software started being added to their mainframes, in order to boost their capabilities. The most recent such change, NASA reports, took place last month, and the experts are now investigating whether this could have anything to do with the malfunctions. That seems unlikely, considering the fact that the same software runs flawlessly on Opportunity.