Beagle2 website

[flagreen]

Loonie Mars - LOL - my imagination just went wild when I saw that picture. I can see him playing with the little rover, pressing buttons, pulling levers, and JPL/NASA are confused why they can't get solid communication with the thing. :rofl:

This looks like a job for Duck Doders from the 24th 1/2 century!

 

[time]

The most informative and frequently updated website I've seen so far.

That's a terrific site, i.

... the flight software is not functioning normally. The two times we have gone and communicated with the system, we have gotten different flight software behaviors ... We are trying to look at those responses to determine 'ok, how come it's behaving that way? And how come when we boot up it doesn't get better?'

Clearly, Spirit's computer has a Martian virus.

Either that, or some Martian tripped over it and gave it a kick.

 

[Jan Kivar]

This looks like a job for Duck Doders from the 24th 1/2 century!

... Back to the drawing board... :mrgrn:

Jan

 

[sechs]

So Spirit has a storage problem. Looks like it's not reading its flash memory correctly.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/index.html

 

[SteveC]

After deleting 1,700 files from the flash memory, it seems Spirit is getting back to normal:

"I am pleased to report it appears to be working just fine," said Glenn Reeves, chief engineer for the rover's flight software. He said NASA should be able to declare Spirit "fully recovered" by Sunday."

Also, Opportunity is scheduled to leave its platform in about 8 hours.

 

[time]

So let me get this straight: Spirit had a software problem?!!!

We are now able to tell that when we mount the flash memory, it does in fact take a lot of the system RAM in the process. In fact, more system RAM than is available. So that's helping confirm the theory we had that the reason the restarts were hanging up was because we were running out of memory when we are trying to mount the flash memory.

...

Engineers think that by deleting that batch of files, the rover might not require as much memory when trying to use the file management system.

...

The massive batch of no-longer-needed files piled up on the rover and prevented its computer system from successfully accessing the flash memory.

 

[Howell]

[urlhttp://www.jpl.nasa.gov/mer2004/rover-images/jan-31-2004/captions/image-1.html]Opportunity has left the lander[/url] and is now about three feet in front of the lander and facing North.

 

[SteveC]

So let me get this straight: Spirit had a software problem?!!!

It appears so. I guess they never tested it when the flash memory was loaded with thousands of files, although I don't know why they wouldn't. They've already cleared the files from Opportunity that it accumulated during its trip to Mars. At least is was something they were able to fix, and not a hardware problem that couldn't be fixed remotely.

 

[sechs]

I think that the issue is lot more subtle than it comes out to be.

In one of the press conferences, someone asked why this hadn't come up in testing. The reply that was given makes me think that how the files accumulated is as important as how many of them there were.

 

[Howell]

1000 GMT (5:00 a.m. EST)
Mission Control just played the song "Going Mobile" by The Who to commorate Opportunity's first drive.