:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::

:: 1.23.2004 ::

:: Mars update ::

From SFGate.com:
Opportunity lifts NASA spirits
2nd Mars rover about to land; predecessor's woes continue

Pasadena -- Frustrated engineers tried under intense pressure Friday to coax bits of information from the Mars rover Spirit's fragmented radio signals, even as they prepared for the risky landing Saturday of the rover's twin on the other side of the Red Planet.

Opportunity, the mission's second rover, is set to land at 9:05 Saturday night on a huge mineral outcrop in the midst of a plain called Meridiania Planum. The area, about the size of Oklahoma and Missouri, is covered in a mineral called hematite, which typically forms in marine or volcanic environments rich in water.

Complex problems are nothing new in the history of NASA's ventures: They have afflicted past missions to Venus, Jupiter and Saturn as well as three previous landing on Mars.

But the growing tension here at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Mission Control is palpable, for Spirit was about to begin one of its most exciting efforts -- exploring an ancient Marian crater -- when trouble with the spacecraft's flow of data began Wednesday.

"The patient is in intensive care right now,'' Pete Theisinger, the mission's chief engineer and project manager, said with the resignation of a 30-year veteran accepting the inevitable crises in space exploration. "Don't expect it to get better for days or even weeks."

Theisinger said the problem was not unlike one that afflicts every computer owner on Earth. Something is haywire in Spirit's software, he said, and his team has tried to reboot the spacecraft's computer 60 times without success.

posted by me

:: 10:20:00 PM [+] ::
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