January 23, 2004
Spirit Communicating
Again But Hasn't Fully Recovered
The flight team for NASA's Spirit received
data from the rover in a communication session that began at
13:26 Universal Time (5:26 a.m. PST) and lasted 20 minutes at
a data rate of 120 bits per second.
"The spacecraft sent limited data
in a proper response to a ground command, and we're planning
for commanding further communication sessions later today,"
Project Manager Pete Theisinger said. He said that, while this
news was encouraging, Spirit would most likely not be back to
normal operating conditions "for many days, perhaps a couple
of weeks, even under the best of circumstances."
The flight team at JPL had sent a command
to Spirit at 13:02 Universal Time (5:02 PST) via the NASA Deep
Space Network antenna complex near Madrid, Spain, telling Spirit
to begin sending data.
Earlier transmissions today came during
a communication window about 90 minutes after Spirit woke up
for the morning on Mars. The signal lasted for 10 minutes at
a data rate of 10 bits per second.transmitting.
Today's communication is the first reliable
interaction with the rover since Wednesday. NASA engineers speculate
that Spirit identified an error in either its hardware or software
and has been rebooting itself in an attempt to correct it, perhaps
reinitializing its program 60 times or more.
If the error is only due to software problems,
NASA said that sending new programming could eventually get the
rover operating at peak condition again. Should the failure turn
out to be related to hardware issues, earth-bound engineers will
have less ability to respond to the situation.
Meanwhile, the other Mars Exploration Rover,
Opportunity is on course to land halfway around Mars from Spirit,
in a region called Meridiani Planum, on Jan. 25 (Universal Time
and EST; Jan. 24 at 9:05 p.m. PST).
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