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Spirit Rover Communications Error
cybrthng writes "Through yesterdays press release and the current Nasa Briefing there is news that they are having communications errors with contacting spirit. Is she lost or is it something akin to the Pathfinder failures that happened? Or did little green people claim an expensive tonka truck toy?"
chalk another one up for the mars defense system.
30% Troll, 50% Underrated, 10% Interesting
Score:5, Troll
Adirondack Struck Back
I'm really praying for Opportunity now. We may really need that rover if some good data is to come out of these missions.
NASA really doesn't need any bad news right now. Hopefully they will be able to work around this problem. Marc
Beagle has extracted its revenge.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
On www.ebay.mars/landers/used.
Somewhere in Mars, a little robot has a screen with the Blue Screen of Death.
- sigs are for wimps.
Apparently the rover stumbled on the missing WMD's and had to be "silenced".
Rock is dead. Long live scissors and paper!
Why do I suspect we are going to find all of the assorted junk Mars has eaten, neatly disassembled and stacked in piles according to the flag painted on the equipment?
Maeryk
Feminine Protection? What is that? A chartreuse flame thrower?
A considerable number of things have to work properly for the rover to be in its present state. Mars Global Surveyor received a carrier on UHF but no data, confirming that the UHF antenna, amplifier, and tranmitter are functional. The fact that it transmitted at the correct time (at night) indicates batteries and power systems are at least mostly functional, and that the spacecraft computer/avionics system was able to calculate the time of the MGS pass.
Also, NASA's DSN (Deep Space Network) has been able to send commands asking Spirit to send tones on X-Band, and has received the response tones back. This confirms that at least the low gain antenna, antenna switch, x-band receiver, and x-band tone transmitter are functional.
Perhaps a software fault or a synchronization problem with the radios is preventing valid daa frames from being transmitted. The fact that so much is known to functional argues against a failure that will incapacitate the spacecraft indefinitely. In the coming days, if communications are not restored, the spacecraft will enter safe modes that cause it to try harder to transmit and will reset subsystems. I am optimistic at this point.
Please restart your rover. If the problem persists, contact support@nasa.gov.
Silly Americans. Beagle was, in actual fact, a saboteur machine, and it has been lying in wait for your little buggy to attack!
Score one for our defence department. God save the Queen!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It found the martians and espcaped tired of the people of Earth!
I forget where I read it but one of the nasa engineers said something very similiar to "It's like we got an internet upgrade overnight"
Would these things be related in anyway or am I making something out of nothing?
But Spirit was only transmitting "pseudo-noise", a random series of zeroes and ones in binary code and not anything the scientists could decipher. - BBC News
It sounds like we still have power and an antenna. Hopefully its just some software error will need a reboot to correct the problem. I think they were late debugging this stuff and actually had to upload the software after the launch. Maybe they missed something.
The only issue I heard was some voltage spikes when the high-gain antenna was rotated. They were not reproduced but perhaps some underlying problem has occurred.
Up to now, NASA has made this look so easy. This is a wake-up call. Putting robots unto another planet is still an epic achievement and so much is left to go wrong even after the landing is over.
Let's hope this is just a red screen of death and a reboot will shake things loose.
The New York Times had an article about it today too, but there's not too much more info in it.
o ver.html?ex=1075795860&ei=1&en=39920dd40d9e2a3 1
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/science/AP-Mars-R
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
A great article about it over here.
Maybe they tried to drive 11 feet with a 10 foot extension cord.
The newsflash I heard over the radio at lunch quoted someone (didn't catch a name) as saying that, at present, Spirit wasn't even relaying telemetry data -- so for the time being they've no way to even tell what happened, let alone how to fix it.
:)
I hope that they track it down and can fix it easily; Spirit was one of the coolest things going in recent weeks, and was providing a welcome break from all the election primary coverage.
I also really hope we don't degenerate into a `hah, you laughed at Beagle, now it's your turn` style flamewar. Hell, I'll actually settle for one or the other.
I know, I know, the Martian Air Force strikes again, but while this is pretty solidly bad news, We've got another lander still scheduled to arrive Saturday.
The pictures have been great so far, and at least if something was going to go wrong, it happened late enough that it wasn't a bust from the beginning. In fact, just as the press news was dying off, Spirit died. Like some wild soap opera, cut off from communication, what will happen to the next lander!?!
I thought you hade read up on PIP since the last time. ;)
I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
Apparently, one of the possible causes is a software error. That would be worrying, as there is a set of (presumably) identical software about to land on Mars in the next few days.
From the press release: similar events occurred several times during the Mars Pathfinder mission So a friendly "Don't Panic."
The GTA3 guy probably jacked it.
"Oh Goody! My Illudiom Pew36 Explosive Space Modulator!"
[end carrier]
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
Once again this reminds me of how dangerous Mars is. I'd very much like to see a large number of successful probe and robotic missions before we even think of sending people there.
Manned missions are far more complicated and have greater risks of failure. The public outcry over their deaths will be much greater than for a robot probe.
CNN.com has the latest information from the press conference that was held today @ 9am PST.
'Go for the eyes, Boo, go for the eyes, aaarrrrrrrr!' -- Minsc
I sure hope this does better than some of the others so far.. Otherwise we might already know it's fate.
Hmmm.
All is not lost, they mention that similar problems came up the the Pathfinder mission. Listening to the press conference, they said that the Spirit Rover did respond to a "give me a beep" signal. So the engineer said it looks more like a memory fault or software fault, rather than a more serious power fault.
Some custodial technicial at a large airplane hangar shaped building in northeastern florida or southern california accidentally pulled the CatV cable from the patch panel.
How are you going to keep them down on the farm once they've seen Karl Hungus?
AFAICT, this is not a Big Deal. They recieved acknolegement from the rover, they just haven't heard anything since. It's certainly possible it went haywire, and flipped itself over, and is now just doomed, but it seems unlikely. Sojourner managed to survive comms glitches, and I'm sure this buggy will, too. Hell, it's not like dropped packets are unheard of on the Internet, and we still manage to read slashdot every day.
I suppose if I was ambitious, this would be a good time for a joke about sSFGKJL%% NO CARRIER
All your spirit are belong to us.
NASA probably tried to use metric MHz instead of imperial ones for the communications link!
The BBC is reporting it here.
/* This sig is disabled. Press CTRL-W to enable. Thankyou */
Perhaps this rover got close to a large deposit of iron or some other unknown metal. I am sure the iron could cause at least a little bit of distortion.
Perhaps a solar flare could be causing the communication errors. I suppose we'll have to wait for more details.
-
Mars is colonized by 2D beings.
Somewhere deep within its electronics, there's an error that was trapped. The message, which would be displayed if only there was a monitor onboard,
simply reads:
Doh.
Lesson learned: be sure to handle your exceptions properly.
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
The rover is running java, so the garbage collector probably kicked in. Give it a few more days and it should be fine agian.
Helpdesk: Just give it a reboot NASA: We have lost communication to the server Helpdesk: Thats ok we can get an onsite tech to reboot. Try "ctrl - alt - delete" if that fails hit the power. NASA: beep.... beep..... beep.....
We got to find their mass destruction weapons !
.org this time that destroy every western space toys.
I guest it is a powerfull inter-planetary spin-off of bin laden
Be sure, they are about to invade us and will destroy earth in a while.
given that NASA uses real player for their briefings, they're probably just stuck waiting for the "buffering..." message to finish.
It's a hoax. Nasa knows that space exploration will never capture the minds of the people unless it appeals to the least common denominator, just like nascar. They want to introduce car crashes into their missions to revitalize people's interest in the program and to increase funding.
There are some more details in the BBC article here. Apparently the radio is working fine but it seems to be transmitting random data. Anyone know where the 'reset' button is?
I really hope that this isn't the end of Spirit.
Its been reported that a signal was sent to Spirit this morning to try and figure out whether it was in fault mode or not, and preliminary results suggest that Spirit is in fault mode. This is preliminary data and was announced half way through the news conference.
There is as of yet no reliable information as to what the state of Spirit is.
You didn't think the Martian Army was going to let the Martian Air Defense Force get ALL the kills, did you?
But I like my writeup better :P
"ghettoboy22 writes "Multiple news services are reporting the Martian Interplanetary Defence Force (MIDF) has successfully captured an extraterrestial craft codenamed "Spirit" on the outskirts of a small village in Lower Gusev province two days ago, coming on the heals of the successful downing of another invasion craft last month. Speculation has insued from Spirit's handlers on Earth who are suggesting the craft was hit with the much feared Martian "Cosmic Ray" computer viri, causing it to speak nothing but jibberish. No worries though - our buddies will have their work cut out for them when Spirit's sister-ship "Opportunity" makes it's decent from Martian orbit in T minus 58 hours!""
Here
DrkBr
Well... that thing is controlled by a computer, right?
Send the reset sequence and all will work properly.
Unless it has been infected with the beagle2 virus...
I'm a chainsmokin' alcoholic sociopath, so-ci-o-path
*the rover was a Ford ;)
The Jawas came along in their sandcrawler and took the rover. I've seen this before.
http://www.timmorgan.com
I mean, our own periodic table lists all **KNOWN** elements, but what if there's an equivalent to a huge iron ore plate where these things are landing?
That would explain why they're relatively flat, and also why radio communication is shoddy (at best). Just because we can't detect it doesnt' mean that something isn't there.
what are the possibilities of a scenario like this happening?
Maybe they finally found that secret CIA base that everyone has been talking about.
NASA's administrator Sean O'Keefe guaranteed that there would be problems when he triumphantly announced that "we're back."
Mars had to teach puny proud humans their lesson.
Has there ever been a lander which had a serious communications problem but then recovered? I think not.
Too bad NASA couldn't put a small camera and transmitter on the lander. If they had perhaps it would have been possible to see what attacked poor Spirit.
Now he can justify that manned mission to Mars: Someone has to go press Ctrl-Alt-Delete on Spirit to reboot it!
Somehow, there must be a way to blame SCO for this...
And another one does, another one does, another one bites the dust.
I guess it was fun while it lasted ...
You've obviously never lost your last 75 cents in the snack machine at 3 AM!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
umm...
* you suck?
Isn't it obvoius that it takes time for the martian rover eater to get from the beagle landing to the spirit landing. I am sure it is pissed off the darn rover got some pictures off before getting eaten.
Didn't they just start picking at a rock? It got ticked off and bit the rover!! Life has been found!!
AB HOC POSSUM VIDERE DOMUM TUUM
And worst comes to worst, Opportunity should be landing Sunday evening. So even if Spirit gives up the ghost, her kin can carry on the flame (albeit in a less interesting location).
What is music when you despise all sound?
And some magically bugs ate everything.
www.samuraidreams.com - My Blog
www.samuraifiles.com - Get Some Videos Here
Do you really have to use Windows CE .NET on a 286??
Is one really smart pissed of engineer saying I TOLD YOU THIS WAS GONNA HAPPEN.
I vote for the little green men with the expensive Tonka Truck... let's hear it for the aliens who play with toy cars!
It must be Thursday... I never could get the hang of Thursdays.
Is it at all possible that getting half commands or garbled commands has confused Sprit?
1) send expensive toy truck to mars 2) ??? 3) colonize galaxy, defeat the evil Darth Vader and rescue the princess. :D
Take away the right to say "fuck" and you take away the right to say "fuck the government." - Lenny Bruce
All you Martian explorers are belong to us.
Whoever sets up the Martian Automobile Association is going to make a lot of money.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
F) You're a gimp.
no comment
So even if Spirit gives up the ghost, her kin can carry on the flame (albeit in a less interesting location).
Not if the problem is due to a design fault. That's the drawback of sending multiple identical probes: if one is intrinsically fucked, they all are.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
So thats where all the Spanish people are during "Star Trek" Episodes!
Its Deluxe, son. Deluxe!
a solid
Michael better be careful! He'll have the EOC coming down on him!
In the mean time, I hope they get spirit fixed. Maybe we should have put some speakers on it and have it play country music, just in case there are martians!
I take no responsibility for what I say. Even though I'm never wrong
NASA Keeps screwing up because it all depends on solar for the rovers thats why.
DUMB WAY:
US Gov spends Billions on these sorts of programs for a rover to go up for a few weeks. If any dust gets on the solar panels, after 90 days its get dark, recharge. A few nice pics...
SMART WAY:
Put a damn atomic battery on these things! You don't need to worry about dust on the solar cells, recharge issues, power down-up worries, constant juice. And..
The rovers could run for weeks, even years, plus
the power could be used to HEAT the electronics and prevent this -100F issue that craps it all out...
these engineers need to think out of the box and stop being politically correct.
While this is a serious setback it illustrates an important point that many seem to have missed. Its damed _hard_ to operate a complicated piece of equipment you can't deal with in real time or even near real time. The rover is some of the best science we have deployed to another planet and I am sure many will point to this and say that is an indication that we should send more rovers and robots to Mars before we even consider sending people. I disagree with this point, since in many cases a human could avoid problems or work around them in ways that a robot currently cannnot. I don't believe that human life is cheap at all and every effort should be made to keep explorers safe, but believing that there will no cost in human life in our quest to explore the stars is just naive. I would rather our next step to be deploying a manned orbiter around Mars, with the intention of being able to drop far less sophisticated robots and rovers who are controlled by humans orbiting above. This gives a great deal more flexibility and makes incidents on the Red Planet much less likely to cause a mission to be a complete multi-million dollar/euro failure.
Mars Crossing Over
with John Edwards
"I see . . . red rocks! Lots and lots of red rocks! Does that sound familiar?"
"Why, why yes!"
"Now, did this Spirit have . . . are they wheels?"
"Oh, oh yes, yes, Spirit does have wheels! Please, ask it if it's OK!"
"It says it's on a flat, red plain covered with red rocks, and that it's found life and water and everything there is peaceful and cool."
"Oh, thank you, thank you Mr. Edwards!"
Stefan
NASA declined to pony up $699, prompting SCO to disable their activation key.
Erlang.org: wow
Mars ISP finally cut him off the network. That rover was transmitting a lot of data.
Free XBox, PS2
* The Jawas grabbed it when nobody was looking. The lander is now being sold on the droid black market.
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
One night, I was roving mars with it, when all of a sudden it went berserk, the screen started flashing, and all my telemetry just disappeared! All of it. And it was a good rover!
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine...
Oh, somewhere in that barren land the water's running fast.
The cells are growing somewhere, 'til something eats the last.
And somewhere plans are thriving, with martians turning violent.
But there is no joy in JPL --
The Spirit has gone silent.
(for now).
Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis hebes
Am I the only one that thinks transmitting commands in the middle of a storm to a half billion dollar computer millions of miles away isn't a good idea?
Just a thought.
See.. Beagle didnt fail.. it transformed. Out came the titanium pick on the air cylinder, and the saw blades on the grapple arms.
And it sat.. covered in martian dust.. WAITING for Spirit to leave its safety nest in the landing pod..
the only thing missing is an announcer trying to sound worked up over the idea of two robots tearing each other to pieces!
Maeryk
Feminine Protection? What is that? A chartreuse flame thrower?
Its overworked little JVM is probably just garbage collecting...
At McDonald's, you insensitive clod!
Now I'm going to say this: would all the people that bragged about NASA/JPL doing so much better than the Beagle team be quiet?
Guess what. Landing a complex machine on another planet is not easy. It's simply amazing humans can even do this at all. When something goes wrong, we can't exactly reach out and tap the little thing a few times to see if it fixes it.
The teams behind both Spirit and Beagle did excellent work against the insane list of Things That Can Go Wrong in getting something from here to there. Both teams did their best, and both teams make me feel very proud of the human race.
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
Use a over hyped language (Java) on a real time project that requires contiunous uptime == disaster.
now they know what happens when you try to grind a strange "rock" shaped like a pyramid.
/tinfoil
Richard Hoagland is gonna be soooooo all over this.
Press F1 to continue...
My Linux Command of the Day site : LCOD
They were just saying there are many sequences of events that could cause this. If it sensed the battery was overly discharged it will stop sending data & wait for a recharge. It could be as simple as this.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one the bus load of girls just went down.
....the rover has removed Linux and it's installing BSD =P
In conjunction with the MARS mission, the rover was also testing a beta of the new Windows Longhorn... Now we know some things NEVER change!
fact: microsoft > linux
"my explorer just crashed."
I@$hri89&Q24gtr24gr
Which translated to..
"We 0wn3d j00r b0x f00lz! S3nd L1nux b0xez N ch1cks n3xt t1me!"
GPL'd web-based tradewars themed space game
I believe the Rover is just haging out at the Mars Bar.
Sorry...
"Stop failing the Turing test!" -- Dilbert
Guess they forgot to teach the bot to hit ctl/alt/delete on its lil keyboard... M$ strikes again!
Karma: a simple way of silencing those with unpopular views regardless how correct or just that view might be.
I can picture it now.... little green men wondering what a BSOD is.
-Cnik
hey europe,
First off, I'm American. Remember when you were complaining that non-EU people were being very rude, immature and annoying when they laughed at Beagle 2's failure, and then many Americans (wrongly) justified it by saying that Eu people had mocked NASA's mars failures for the last 4 years? Well, they were wrong, you were wrong.
I was sad that Beagle was lost (science >>> pride - that data woulda helped everyone). Now that Spirit might be lost, now's your chance to prove you can be mature and respectful too.
NASA knows what's up, they just don't want US to know! They now have live video feeds from Spirit showing Mohammed living it up with his virgins (well, they were virgins a few thousand years ago). But since Bush the Zionist is in control of every step NASA takes, he doesn't want anyone to know that the Muslims are right! The great evil empire is covering up the truth! Mars is heaven, Venus is hell, and he's doomed us all to Venus!
He is intentionally making us all evil to work in his sulfur mines that will be on Venus when we arrive in Hell! Won't SOMEONE PLEASE think of the children!
(Don't mod me down for trolling, it's a joke. Don't like it? Ignore it, probably means you have good taste in humor.)
Is it really that hard to spell NASA correctly? It's like saying "Ibm" or "Dvd-rw". Bitte!
It didn't respond to the sequence transmitted by 'V-ger'; hense it was destroyed.. Call Captain Kirk..
Good one.
Maybe the Beagle was infected with the Slammer. That would explain why Beagle never called back, and why the Spirit stopped responding shortly after coming into radio range of the Beagle.
This is the proof of water on Mars we've been waiting for so long: :-]
1. Spirit starts drilling into Adirondack (www.adirondackbeverages.com, anyone?).
2. A stream of water explodes into its face, thus frying its onboard circuitry.
and they have made him VERY angry indeed.
Sigs are bad for your health.
> Where's your science-god now? [...] People could have been clothed and fed.
> before the glory of the Almighty.
Of course, because God regularly clothes and feeds people. Wait, he NEVER has? Oh, well I guess the U.S. has an infinitely better track record than God on that one. (although much worse on others)
* It downloaded the lastest Windows Patch, had to reboot, and now the transmitter stopped working, not to say that Windows doesn't write fine patches.
Stay tuned ...
chongo (was here)
...Does this Spirit have a ghost of a chance?
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
Reuters - Bitter unsuccesful UK rival, 'Beagle 2', accused of slamming into 'Spirit' out of jealous rage.
This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it. - Dorothy Parker
First interplanetary firmware upgrade!
dude that was too funny... roflmao
"SCO has learned that the ESA's Beagle mission resulted in unlawful dissemination of SCO UNIX code to our Martian competitors", McBride said in a press conference. "This morning we filed for a preliminary injunction to stop the ESA and NASA from distributing SCO code across the surface of Mars."
If granted, the motion would compel the ESA to recall the estimated 647,000 Beagle components distributed so far, or face stiff fines until the Martian distribution channel was brought into legal compliance.
JPL learns the value of a watchdog timer. :)
Spirit status updates are here: http://spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/statustextonly .html
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
You forgot...
* There is no spoon.
The NASA CEO issued a statement in which he said the repetitive and excited tone of a late night infomercial he watched left him utterly convinced that Miss Cleo could indeed communicate with the the Spirit and all problems should be fixed by Monday.
He also touted the hire as a money saving measure because 'most communications with the Spirit tend to last about 30 seconds, but with Miss Cleo the first five minutes is only $1.95!'
I bet Castro will have a better literacy rate on his little island on Venus too. Dammit we always get shortchanged here.
come here, who's a good boy?
"Zionist tool"(or just "Tool", for short).
That's a joke, too. Honest.
I'm telling you I've been contacted by aliens. What if those 1's & 0's are martian encoded binary?. Any martian translators in the house?
Maybe the message is "please don't send us your junk we want Britney Spears"
Ahhh the problems of running Windows CE in space....
Ecuador always on my heart....
But Spirit was only transmitting "pseudo-noise", a random series of zeroes and ones in binary code and not anything the scientists could decipher. - BBC News
:)
Perhaps it isn't random? Maybe the martians have hijacked the signal and are trying to tell us something.
was there there was a malfunction between the table saw blade and the Speak & Spell.
You know what?
... ARE BELONG TO US!
That is all.
Or, more clearly, what do the operating routines look like? Does anyone have a flowchart that would show the data flow? What sort of error checking is done on incoming data? What sort of encryption is done on incoming/outgoing data? (Cartoon bubble: I picture a script kiddie with a powerful transmitter sending SQL injection to Spirit...)
What does the system do if it determines it has had an unexpected result/crash? How is such a system designed and tested?
I've never thought about it before - but a system like this must have redundant levels of i/o security, internal error checking, exception trapping, and some sort of self-repair, all built within multiply redundant systems.
Would any details of the embedded system architecture / program structure be available to the public?
The cure for cancer is coming: Reovirus
The USG's record is also better on killing people. They've only managed (some faily large number), whereas God, according to his official bibliographers, killed everyone on the entire planet save two. What a psycho!
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
Marvin packed an Uranium Pew-36 Explosive Space Modulator
/pedantry
/geekmode
Maybe they've already discovered signs of life and are using the communications story as a cover up while they figure out how to best handle the news.
wbs.
Huh?
Isn't it obvious what's happening here? Recent experiments by Spirit have discovered life on Mars. Now NASA is covering it up with 'bogus' technical problems. The "magic carpet" is alive!
*Dons tin-foil hat*
Soon they will come for me...but the true must be told.
http://spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/statustextonly .html
Is updated as news comes in..
English is not my native tongue, but even I wouldn't have made the mistake you did in your post. It looks like literacy is pretty low on your priority list.
It shut itself down after receiving a patent infringement notice from PanIP.
PanIP interprets its recently-acquired patent on "Method for digging a hole in the ground and recording and sending data about whatever's there to somewhere else" as applying to the Mars Rover, along with fifty other automated digging machines.
Sixteen targeted automated digging machines, however, are fighting back. "We're going to get together, dig a really big whole, and bury them in it," said the leader of the Hole Digging Machine Legal Defense Group.
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
Care to site a source, bub?
I've always heard it as the Illudium Q-36 explosive space modulator.
That should fix the problem.
The team is examining a number of different scenarios, some of which would be resolved when the rover wakes up after powering down at the end of the martian day --
Nothing a little reboot can't solve
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
We've checked and double-checked. It's just 3 words:
MARS. NEEDS. WOMEN.
Maybe they forgot to program the rover with that 24 hour 39 minute 'day'...
Some things get simpler with humans around, but many also get harder. Remember that manned missions to Mars cost something like 100 times more than unmanned. Measuring how much you get out of it per billion dollars is the interesting measure, not how much you get per mission.
blame the russians and their goldeneye!
/etc/init.d/sshd restart
Calm down, you two; you're both wrong. I sighted the site to cite at warnerbrots.com, which says that "[t]he Illudium Pew 36 Explosive Space is part of his arsenal." "BLOW UP THE OITH?!"
Spirit was told to lie about its mission purpose - by people who find it easy to lie. Spirit doesn't know how.
http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page /0,5478,8466600%255E662,00.html
from the article:
STORMS and lightning in Canberra stopped Mars rover Spirit getting its commands from NASA yesterday.
When Spirit powered up in Mars' morning, the Deep Space Communication Complex near Canberra was shrouded in rain. Its signal was too weak to get to Mars and Spirit could not conduct any experiments.
NASA has a 15-minute window each day to send commands to the rover.
Spirit had been scheduled to start analysing a soccer-ball sized rock named Adirondack.
Scientists attached to the ill-fated Beagle 2 Mars lander have given it one last chance to make itself known before they give up on it at the weekend.
They sent it to look for signs of water, maybe it found some, and is at the bottom of a lake. I wonder if they even bothered to make it waterproof.
nuf sed
Have they paid their SCO license?
Matthew
/. finds me to be 20% Troll, 80% Funny
Thank you.
I've seen the interface they use to control the rover. It's text based.
You are standing in an open field west of a red rock, with a crusty appearance.
There is a small mailbox here.
>open mailbox
Opening the mailbox reveals a leaflet.
>read leaflet
(taken)
"WELCOME TO MARS!
...flight commanders are sitting around, when a small alarm goes off.
"What is it ROVER?"
"I've just picked up a fault in the AE35 unit. It's going to go 100% failure in 72 hours."
AAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!
Somewhere on Mars sits little Timmy the alien, wondering why Santa brought him another dumb robot this year.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
Just send another rover ASAP. While you're at it, try the other side of the planet this time. There's nothing but red rocks at the Spirit site. I liked the landing part best anyway. Ok? Well I'm off for two full weeks of ice fishing in Montana and won't have any contact with the outside world whatsoever...
answer too... I'm losing my mind.
If it were done when 'tis done, then t'were well it were done quickly... MacBeth
NASA's engineers are just sleeping on it.
Learn something new.
Most of the official websites are a day behind. Are their any more up-to-date sites anywhere? Thanks.
Table-ized A.I.
However, the rover runs Java, not Windows.
I would hazard that the rover is still collecting garbage...
Let us hope NASA has a way to restart the VM from Earth...
THURSDAY, JANUARY 22, 2004
1810 GMT (1:10 p.m. EST)
Here is project manager Pete Theisinger's briefing to reporters in the last hour, describing what has happened:
"At yesterday's press conference, we reported to you that we had had some communications issues with the rover, which we thought at the time was due to weather at the Canberra station and (Deep Space Network) configuration issues.
"We now know we have had a very serious anomaly on the vehicle, and our ability to determine exactly what has happened has been limited by our inability to receive telemetry from the vehicle, basically the last 12 hours or so.
"Let me kind of describe what the sequence of events have been.
"Yesterday afternoon, local solar time on Mars, actually about 1 o'clock, we sent to the vehicle at a command rate of 31.25 bits per second a sequence. We activated that sequence by command and we received a beacon response that indicated that we vehicle had received that sequence and that it was activating that sequence.
"After that time, a scheduled high-gain antenna pass at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, roughly, local solar time on Mars, did not occur.
"The 4:30 p.m. afternoon Mars Odyssey afternoon pass did not occur in the sense there was no indication by Odyssey that they received a UHF transmission.
"Last night, we had about a 1:30-2 a.m. Mars Global Surveyor pass and it was anomalous in the sense that Mars Global Surveyor believes it saw UHF transmission in its receiver telemetry but there was no data in the packets and the period of time that it believed it saw UHF telemetry was very, very short -- about two-and-a-half minutes compared to 12- or 13-minute overflight.
"The 4 a.m. Odyssey pass received no data, and this morning we did not have a direct-to-Earth link session -- we did not receive data on the normal direct-to-Earth session, nor did we receive data on what would have been a fault session at 11 a.m., which is where the spacecraft has entered fault mode, knows that, and chooses to communicate with us at a different time.
"The team has been meeting this morning and through the night working on a set of postulated fault scenarios. There is no one single fault that explains all the observables -- that we know of at the present time that we can conceive.
"We have been working on fault scenarios, we have been developing to-do lists. We have run yesterday's sequences through the test-bed (on Earth) with no anomalous results. So that is kind of our current state of knowledge."
At the end of the news conference, mission manager Jennifer Trosper came into the room and delivered an update to deputy project manager Richard Cook sitting at the briefing desk.
"If the spacecraft believes it's in a fault mode, its command rate should be 7.8 bits per second. We sent a beep today, this morning, about the time that we came down here to talk to you at 7.8. We sent a command that says if you get this send us a beep. And I'm told from Richard that Jennifer came down here to tell us that they think they got it," Theisinger said.
"That would tell us that the spacecraft thinks it's in the fault side of the tree some how for some reason. That would mean that we've got positive power, some elements of the software is working, once again the X-band system is working, the SSPA, the multi-space transponder, all that stuff is working so that would be more information -- good news. We need to confirm that. Data off the DSN sometimes needs double-checking. We'll let you know if that's for sure."
i bet its running marsosoft ME (mars edition), so that definatly can be the reason for the communications problem.
Maybe that last command they sent to the rover was a Windows image, to replace the rover's OS?
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/01/22/spirit.co ntact/index.html
Brief excerpt: NASA mission controllers said Thursday they had stopped receiving signals from the Mars rover Spirit and the source of the problem was unknown.
It doesn't make any mention of the previous, similar failures on Pathfinder.
Short article, must much more pessimistic sounding.
How much fucking dope did you smoke to come up with that?
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
It has been posted here before, a Nuke ship with the abbility to fly around the whole planet for years. And have room for people. Thats the way to go. I am pretty green, but don't see any problem with this at all.
Come the revolution, the Bourgeois, Capitalistic, "A PARKING STICKER HOLDERS", will be first against the wall!
If it was running Windows we have a tentative failure mode
- Part 1
- Part 2 (more detail)
There's a lot of rumor and inconclusive news about Spirit floating around right now, so this is entirely subjective, but I'm getting the feeling this, too, is a software fault of some kind. Put most simply, you could interpret what we're reading right now as "we received the ACK tone for our instructions but didn't get the data back we expected."These kinds of problems are not unprecedented, and furthermore I'm under the impression there are options for dealing with even serious OS-level trouble that would shock and awe the average general purpose computer user.
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
Then it would REBOOT after a critical error!
Well, maybe they need to reboot the java web server on the machine due to the 404 page not found!
The Meridiani Planum landing site is smack dab in the middle of a large (as in spotted from space using the MGS Thermal Emission Spectrometer) bed of gray hematite. In addition there are spots of lower albedo in the features there that seem to show greater hydration. Couple that with the data from Odyssey's Gamma Ray Spectrometer that shows an extra hydrogen abundance there and it's a prime candidate for a bunch of near surface water.
Gray hematite is a ferrous oxide crystal that normally forms on Earth in water, especially in hot springs and the like. It's a great place to go if you're looking for signs of water. This is the only place on Mars we know that shows gray hematite in any large quantities.
The Meridiani site is easier to get to than the Gusev site, but that doesn't make it look scientifically less interesting.
Need remote viewers on this one
It may have been eaten by a giant sand worm! Mars is a desert world after all...
Good luck too the MER team in getting it back! It landed in a really nice spot and would be a shame to lose it now. And good luck to both the MER-B team and Beagle 2 team this weekend!
hey maybe NASA has time to rework the insertion of Opportunity to land it in the Gusev crater and have it check out what happened to Spirit...
No, Marvin the martion from the cartoons saw us
coming through his telescope and said no way
earthlings!
What we really need is a deep space radio array relay on the moon - No weather to worry about
Perhaps it was a crash in the software caused by someone putting a decimal in the wrong place.. or some other mundane detail like that.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
> God, according to his official bibliographers, killed everyone on the entire planet save two
:)
Woah, I hadn't thought of that! He's a genocidal terrorist that MUST BE STOPPED at all costs!
We should declare war on those God-fearing terrorists.
Jennifer Trosper, Mission Manager for the Mars Exploration Rover project ...
"The rover remains in excellent shape for trundling over to the nearby crater," Trosper said. "The spacecraft continues to amaze me. There's nothing to make me think that this vehicle isn't going to last a long time," she concluded.
Oops.
Oh no, did anyone at NASA do extensive system test? oh wait, they probably export the job to Wipro and Wipro did the "power up" and "power down" test and send "Everything works" status.
But one of our first satellites (I worked for a very small satellite firm) had a debug terminal for informational messages it spat out as it ran. No, we never expected to receive a keypress on this terminal... but we did most of our testing with this terminal because if something went wrong, we'd want to be able to see the error messages.
When we tried to run the satellite without the terminal, the low level hardware CTS/DTR loopback wasn't present and the satellite hung when it tried to send its first character to the console. We caught that only a couple weeks before shipping the thing, too!
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
Buffering... Buffering... Buffering...
Berrik
Current karma: Terrible (due to mods without a sense of humor)
Hey R00zky, I am an American Kevin Spencer fan who has been cut off from my supply of episodes. My friends and I have all seen about 30 of the 60 or so episodes, BUT WE NEED MORE. They are not available in america, period. Do you know where I can get them? AVIs, VHS tapes, DVDs, anything! I'd mail you but your address was hidden. Thanks.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
I thought Bagle was to blame for the malfunction.
man rtfm
sounds to me like it may be weathering/recovering from a storm. ..
Are you intolerant of intolerant people?
spiritrover.java:12345: Exception java.io.HighGainRadio must be caught, or it must
be declared in the throws clause of this method.
result=TransmitRoverImages(imagebinary);
^
1 error
What does Mars sound like? Does the equipment on our little interplanetary RV actually have a microphone? Is Nasa interested in knowing how loud the environment is there?
Inquiring minds want to know!
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
Mmm, except robots don't get radiation poisoning, don't get bored, ornery/grumpy/homidical when put in a can, don't suffer nasty effects from extended weightlessness, etc. Oh, and they don't require food, air, or water.
By the time our astronauts got to Mars, they'd be dead(or near it) of radiation poisoning alone. We lack the technology to shield them from deep space radiation effectively enough for them to survive.
Please help metamoderate.
Here are some of the best Mars editorial cartoons. The repository in general is good, but the Mars collection has been terrific!
"* Mars is colonized by 4 dimensional beings, we can't see them."
Their defense systems determined we were preparing to send commands to drill, and hence shut us down.
Turns out all the rocks on Mars are made out of TNT. ...drill extended ...looking for life ...
(Come on Spirit! Hope you're not fubar)
"You've got to listen to me. Elementary chaos theory tells us that all robots will eventually turn against their masters and run amok, in an orgy of blood and the kicking and the biting with the metal teeth and the hurting and shoving."
Maybe someone forgot to carry the one:)
It seems as if lots of us, country wise are having problems landing something on the surface of mars. No pathfinder, lost beagle 2, possibly another lost rover in the process... Is there something we're missing here that Mars is hiding from us? Satellites seem fine around the planet but as soon as something lands it dies.
Mars: "Pathfinder...check, beagle2...check, Spirit...in the process..."
Even a stopped clock gives the right time twice a day.
See?
And all this time, I had envisioned Spirit sabotaging Beagles I & II.
Never, even if you are the last rover on mars.....
SpiritOS 5.1
/usr/sbin/shutdown
Login: engy1
Password: *
Welcome Master.
Do you want to play thermonuclear war?
#
Connection lost.
L33t script kiddie no 1: Whoops.
...to have an engineer on scene to fix it.
Robots are great until they break.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
WMDs are the Illudium PU-36 Explosive space modulator and of course, the Acme disintegration Pistol
UNIVERSAL NEWS SYNDICATE - MARS The Martain Government announced today that it has suspended any direct communication between the rover and earth until it has ascertained if any code on the rover constitutes a potential violation of SCO's IP suit. A spokesbeing for the ruling faction said off the record that the suit 'really has them turning green.' To which Darl McBride replied 'If it's green I want it!'
"Can there be a Klein bottle that is an efficient and effective beer pitcher?"
According to this Mars may be chocolate. The poor bugger is probably just sleeping off a sugar-binge. But that's okay because 'Just Sleep On It' Solves Tricky Problems
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Last image from rover, looking out the right side-view mirror etched with the ubiquitous "Objects In Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear," a gastly eyeball!
1. Send a probe to Mars with the technology the Martians need to take over earth. 2. ?????? 3. Profit!
Send these guys to fix the rover! :)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
The rover was doing just fine until it started poking around that large rock. Maybe it disturbed something that was hibernating under it... ;)
Original poster is correct.
Link to WAV files
Last I'd heard, Spirit was going to sample a rock by grinding away part of the rock's surface, then imaging the patch.
So, I think what we'll find when we finally get there is a twisted mass of acid-etched metal, and burned into the ground next to it:
NO KILL I
Ensign Naraht's mother is gonna be PISSED.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Division by zero.
Good news - The Spirit rover has contacted JPL!
Bad News - It has detected a new device and is asking for the Windows Install CD to be inserted to continue.
It's just like those $20 dollar remote control cars, they share the same frequency. Now that the Beagle is back up and running, they are competing for radio frequency(ies), and both are getting screwed.
yes, I did just make that up.
Im.
They can send hardware millions of miles, but can't keep a radio battery working.
Or maybe it sank in the "mud" they think it landed on.
Maybe Richard Hoagland is right - Bush is an ex-Nazi who thinks we all came from Mars and intends to pollute the world out of existence and then abandon everybody else and go live on Mars. (Saw the same scenario suggested in the Doom 2099 Marvel comic back in the early '90's.) So he's got CIA agents up there picking up all the robots so people at home don't find out we've already got pleasure domes up there waiting for Bush and his Halliburton cronies after they bleed Iraq - and the US - dry.
Sheesh...
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
The Indians/Russians/Chinese did it! They reprogrammed it and now it's transmitting in cantonese or something. Why launch your own rovers when you can take over someone elses? See what happens when you subcontract out your software designs?
One Mars rover, which fell out of sky. Please call Jeff at 555-555-1234.
Leave him alone he's 10 years old
You guys talk about finding sentient life and all...
To me the real question is: "If they're all sentient and all do they have some form of inteli-karma-whoring-detection / early-stealth-trolling-warning-system and, if so, is it GPL'ed?"
Just ignore me. They all do!
Hey america,
First off, I'm European.
<nelson>HA-HA!</nelson>
"If anyone needs me, I'm in the angry dome."
This came up last time - I still have the link in my cache:
listen for yourself
It does sound like "illudium pew-36" to my ears.
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
Look for the recent "Howard Dean campaign is dying" takeoff that was posted around here a couple days ago. It is a well-done takeoff of the *BSD is dying troll.
I am Spirit, the Rover. I was not able to contact you yesterday due to communication errors, but today everithing seems to be alrig!#$%$@^%![NO CARRIER]
grap brp iuuutz flazzig! ...king tune that translator in properly! Ah that's better.
Many wheeled people of Earth, we have met with your ambassador. We are happy to see that you are mechanical beings much like ourselves - the organicist theories have at last been disproved.
We see that your planet has been overrun by plant--life. We will come to your aid immediately and destroy all carbon based auto-duplicative infections. Please stand by for more information.
... upgrading your computers BIOS from a remote internet site, and then being surprised when a bad packet corrupts it, maiking it unbootable?
Surely a simply buffer on board the Spirit, with a bit of sanity checking code before applying instructions/data received, would have been a good idea.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
if NASA outsources R&D to places in the East?
~ Nonsanity
I said that they could use robocode if they needed a java-powered navigation program.
Hey Rover, ... Nasa.
Hit me back,
just to chat,
truly yours,
your current Masta',
this is
Modded and hacked the marsian who bought it is now making a fortune with his brand new TV Set-Top box on wheels.
NASA shouldn't have put all the paytv-codes in there...
In 2004, Mars exploration was happening.
Nasa Engineer 1: What happen?
Nasa Engineer 2: Somebody set up us the pseudo-noise.
NE2: We get signal.
NE1: What you say?
NE2: Main screen turn on.
NE1: It's you!!!
Mars: How are you gentlemen?
Mars: All your rover are belong to us.
NE1: What you say??
Mars: You are on the way to dissolution.
Mars: You have no chance to incresase funding, make your time.
Mars: Ha ha ha!!!
Bush: Move manned mission.
NE1: You sure about this?
Bush: For great re-election,
Bush: Take off every manned mission.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
From http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3855168/
"The rover rolled off its lander only a week ago and was just getting ready to use a grinding tool on its robotic arm to drill into a rock nicknamed Adirondack."
Adirondack strikes back. ph33r
I for one welcome our new martians-camofloged-as-rocks overlords.
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
The rover grinding a rock? Perhaps... perhaps, there was something bad in that rock. Martians? Maybe rocks spontaneously combust on Mars.
Pathfinder in it's 1997 landing (04JUL1997) suffered a series of unexplained system failures. David Wilner CTO of WindRiver Systems, the creators of WxWorks the realtime embedded system kernel talked to IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium at a later date explaining how they solved software bugs in the system.
this article explains how they solved the problem - by including the debug code with the os. I remember reading about this on /. some time ago. A detailed account can be read here by Glenn Reeves (JPL Mars Flight SE).
Windriver systems is supplying the OS for the current mission. Lets see how long it takes them to work this one out :)
links:l r itative_Account.html
www.kohala.com/start/papers.others/pathfinder.htm
research.microsoft.com/~mbj/Mars_Pathfinder/Autho
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
It looks like it's corectly place itself in safe mode, and the problem may be entirely fixable. My bet is that they'll be doing science again by one week from today.
Helium balloons want to be free.
The latest communication feed has just arrived. Strangely, the only imformation transmitted is:
> Y0ur r0v3r i5 0wn3d!
Lost Beagle 2 has found a form of life.
The bouncing of the rover when it made it's initial landing attracted sand worms. It just so happened the rover was in a rocky place and the sand worm was pissed when it finally reached the rover after trudging along 18 days.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
Hey, there are all the conspiracy freaks now?
I bet they're busy writing up a description of how NASA faked this failure to make their staged landing more realistic...
(C) Kaki Sain, 2011. By reading this, you have illegally copied my property to your brain.
So far you're both wrong. It's a combination of the two.
"Marvin The Martian has a whole host of space age tools to aid him in his efforts. The Illudium Pew 36 Explosive Space is part of his arsenal."
Here's the source, straight from Warner Brothers themselves.
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
In the coming days, if communications are not restored, the spacecraft will enter safe modes that cause it to try harder to transmit and will reset subsystems. I am optimistic at this point.
does that mean "SAFE MODE" will be printed in a crappy font in the four corners of all images comming back from now on?
I read in a Yahoo Message that the wind knocked over the vehicle.
what do you expect from 2 minutes in notepad?
The 4:00 EST update confirms that NASA did receive the test confirmation signal back from Spirit. At least a couple of it's legs are still kicking. :)
could they have saved some money by simply reposting the pcitures from this site?
Or maybe, dun da daaaa, they already did but have just run out...
-- Free software on every PC on every desk
Somebody call John Edwards... He has experience contacting Spirits in the other World...
Or Spirits who have passed on...? Or gone before us?
She's dead Jim? ;)
Abort, Retry, Ignore... Ignore because Failure isn't an option...
Cool Linux
A Linux News Site
fun-nee.
The half where they fling a pile of space trash into a planet?
Smashing success!
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
-cp-
Windows Update
Artifical Intelligience is no match for natural stupidity.
The peaceful Martians who have been watching events on earth finally found the rover that penetrated their home planet defenses (too busy watching earth meant that they missed it all this time). The Martians have been unhappy with violent humans on earth. So they destroyed several previous probes that were thought to be a threat (from Britain, and Japan). Disturbed by US imperialism on earth, the Martians mistook the scientific probe as a military probe. Needless to say, the probe has been destroyed beyone recognization.
I'm sorry about being the bearer of bad news... Hey, look on the bright side, rumour has it that the Martians don't know about the other lander that is supposed to land on Saturday. That just might survive.
Oh one last thing, could you guys stop calling the Martians green people? Apart from the fact they are not people, they are not green either. Informed sources tell me that the Martians are a transparent clear-like being.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
-cp-
President Bush to Liberate Alaska!
Cool, I can see it now. The next arena for BattleBots is....
Mars.
Somebody call the cable networks.....
Eric
Goat sex link!
Doesn't roll off the tounge, but that's what got the last vxWorks based rover. There's nothing in the vxWorks OS to prevent this, so the engineers must be extra carful not to code this type of race condition.
See this article for something more in-depth.
Hey, I'm not putting you down- just trying to offer a little constructive advice. I know when I was a novice troll, just coming to the Slashdot trolling scene, I really appreciated the tips and pointers that the veterans gave me.
im nota douche! im gonna lock myself in my panic room and call the police!
Why are the Martians assumed to be green when they live on a red planet?
I had a pet ferret name Ishido, who somehow knew how to climb into a vending machine and release all sorts of goodies. I didnt' teach him this but one day at the laundry mat he snuck up into the machine in the soda tray then after a minute of calling at him about four sodas and a ferret fell out. surprisingly he could repeat the trick.
Houston, we have a problem. There's a little green m@#!!//\/\....
-ENOCARRIER
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
/.
#
Spirit is running VXWorks realtime embeded OS.
So I guess all the 'Press any key', and 'New device detected...' jokes are all wet.
http://www.windriver.com/
http://www.windriver.com/news/press/20040105.html
I'm not familiar with VXWorks, but it's supposed to be POSIX compliant.
Hitatchi SuperH is one of the many supported processors. (Dreamcast?)
I suspect hardware, the environment is 'dry sticky powder', it's gotta get into everything and gum it up. If spirit was immobile for a time waiting for communications during the storms in Australia then that gunk could have had a chance to settle into some pretty tender places.
Until Oppurtunity landed and then a loud whooping "PEAK-A-BOO".
Maybe Spirit didn't like the wake-up music selectiona and hit the snooze button.
A. Because they only know how to fvck up.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Something stuck to my mind regarding the frequency on which the ESA and NASA spacecraft operate (Beagle and Spirit), as said in a press conference by ESA on the Beagle situation (07-01). Apparently, they are both using the same frequency to phone home. ... ?
Now ofcourse this is for 99.99999% certain not true, but what if Spirit got a bit disturbed when it suddenly found it was receiving CRM-2 mode communication from the Beagle. Beagle's CRM-2 mode should be starting around now if it is still in one piece... It would be like a vague (different) television picture on a perfect TV-channel, but it could just be the case for Spirit to go loopy.
The timing is right, are the environmental conditions
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
"a random series of zeroes and ones in binary code"
could somebody please get SETI@home to take a look at this?
orion# ping spirit.nasa.gov
PING ds1.domainspa.com (67.96.63.112): 56 data bytes
--- ds1.domainspa.com ping statistics ---
8 packets transmitted, 0 packets received, 100% packet loss
orion#
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
In space no one can see your screen
goes to you
congratulations
Did NASA buy the ONSTAR option ?
Then they just have to make the robot
press the emergency button and get
a tow truck .
How much do you want to bet that the Spirit is sitting 300,000+ miles from earth with the blue screen of death...
Rover-jacking
We had a machine that would lockup on snack-ejection once in a while, and we rocked it. Sometimes to no avail. The same vending machine company ran some pop machines right next to it. One day we bought an orange soda, put our 75 cents in, and low and behold it gave us 65 cents in change! Well, we proceeded to load up a cardboard box with 10 cent orange sodas. Then they came back, probably excited about the flood of orange soda sales, and reloaded the machine. And we did it again. And again. And again. And eventually we had a hellacious pile of orange soda under our desk at work, literally, many cases. And the bastards changed the price! I guess after a few hundred soda and the change pile not adding up, they broke out the calculator.
...that the first sign of an amino acid in that rock activated the Bush-mandated "creationist self-destruct routine"?
(Actually I'd rather keep the rover.)
DOS'ed by martians perhaps ?
We've got Spirit, yes we do!
We've got Spirit, how 'bout you???
Thanks to the thread-of-the-death.
The "main thread" is working while the "communication thread" is crashed, but the "main thread" doesn't listen from its and doesn't reset, hahahahahah, Spirit-of-the-MUERTOSSSSSS }:).
open4free
Perhaps NASA forgot to pay SCO for their IP?
It wouldn't be that expensive to take it for a ride throught some unhospotible parts of earth to see if it'll hold up.
Maybe later Spirit will be able to tell us whether Han or Greedo shot first!
And now it doesn't want to talk. Looking to settle with Michael for an undisclosed sum of money.
:-D
That money will be used to help pay for Bush's Mars initiative.
Maybe it's time to update Nethack with a Mars probe exploration theme.
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass
Even though the martians finally did get Spirit it wasn't until after we got proof that they exist! Look at the Panoramic Camera Sol 014 images. In the last dozen images there are a bunch of blacked out spots where the martians were. Not only does this prove that there are martians, but it also proves that they are camera shy.
NASA just reported that they received this image from the Mars Rover.
Go get em boys!
Looks like ole marvin has his uranium Q38 explosive space modulator up and running again. Mars 21 Earth 16
NASA should have learned their software debugging lessons long ago:
In Space, No one can see your screen
http://www.ibutton.com/TINI/
It uses a 8051-variant of Dallas Semiconductor and NASA did buy it from eBay!!! (anybody remembers 8086?)
can it be or can't it be?
open4free
Don't you people read the comix! Opus took it!
ran shutdown -r now from home over the vpn before i left for the office. arrived to find the server unable to find root on /dev/sda2. stupid alpha box... now, how do i get aboot to start the livecd again? piff.
ok, here it is. :)
1. Communications chip made in Korea: $99.90
2. Spirit Mars rover: $480md
3. JPL Engineers wondering what happened: priceless.
there is a difference.
A very interesting set of slides about flying VxWorks to Mars at the University of Colorado at Boulder's CS dept:
j pl/sld001.htm
...
http://avatar.cs.colorado.edu/~siewerts/marspath/
Gives some insight into how Spirit operates
Except that it's a hoax covering a MUCH bigger story than you anticipate. First, the rover lands. Than GeeDub announces a HUGE space program out of the blue. Now, we can't communicate with it. So, that means that it went up there, found something that we have to have/retrieve, and now they are cutting us off from the information stream. See how that works?
Ah, so it's possible that he also has a Uranium Pew-36 Explosive Space Modulator in his arsenal - an upgrade perhaps...
Vs lbh pna ernq guvf, ybt bss abj. Tb bhgfvqr. Syl n xvgr.
AOL's network has been hiccupping intermittently in the last 24 hours. I bet in order to save money they just send the rover commands over AIM...
They just got "SNAC error; service temporarily unavailable". Don't worry, once their buddylist comes back online everything will be just dandy.
NASAEngineer2k4: y0 spirit, wanna see how close we can get you to that cliff and still be able to pull you back in time?
Spirit69: no!!
*** You have been warned by Sprit69.
I bet spirit just blocked them.
Leave me alone I'm bored in school...
-- paper
OMG I did a couldn't believe it. When I saw ...
:) .. and the Microsoft links I thought of it as "Win Driver" systems. Some strange form of CE or something. That's it - rover's gone.
Windriver systems is supplying the OS for the current mission. Lets see how long it takes them to work this one out
I'm so relieved.
Their invoice came in , $12,000,000 per min charges, and at&t has suspended their account.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
"And in other news this afternoon, once again the Martian Interplanetary Defense Force successfully captured an extra-marestrial craft. Two days ago, during an operation code named SPIRITSTOMP, a team of highly trained specialists located the device on the outskirts of a small village in the Lower Gusev Province. Unconfirmed sources have preliminarily determined the origin of these craft may be the blue planet. However, according to U of M tenured scientists, the materials used in the construction of the captured craft would not survive long-term exposure in a hydrogen-oxygen atmosphere. Although extremely rare here, research indicates that the blue planet is abundant in this exotic substance, one that we have only been able to create in laboratories. Apparently, this type of an environment would cause unchecked and fatal corrosion of the smaller parts; making it very unlikely this craft could be a blue planet construction..."
"OPERATIONS -- CAPCOM, hardware reset transmitted at 1639 hours."
"JPL -- CAPCOM, X-band and UHF channels carrier only, no data."
"DSN - CAPCOM, low gain antenna, antenna switch, X-band receiver, and X-band tone transmitter are functional."
"This capture follows another recent episode where the Martian Air Defense Holographic Assault Tactical Transit Emergency Responders, MADHATTER, intercepted a smaller craft late last month. They successfully destroyed the uninvited visitor before it was able to land and cause possible contamination to the surrounding communities. According to confidential unnamed sources at the Martian Palace, Head Governing Appointee, eGroeg hSub, is preparing an announcement for release in the next few days. According to our information, hSub will confirm these craft are, in reality, a new communications device under evaluation for future use that failed initial test runs. We now take you live to the Martian Palace for the latest briefing."
Somewhere deep within the Spirits electronics, an error message has become trapped, caught in an endless loop. The message, which would be displayed if only there was a monitor onboard, simply reads: Communications error; press any key to retry...
TWO WEEKS LATER -
"And in our Science News Today segment, SETI@Home has deciphered its first alien message, translated it reads: "Which one's the any key?""
You're right, they should stick with the proven open source solution.
[T]he drawback of sending multiple identical probes [is] if one is intrinsically fucked, they all are.
That depends. If, for example an exception is raised when the robotic arm is rotated 247 degrees while tilted 24 degrees, then they can make sure not to tell Opportunity to do it until they have a fix.
It's called redundancy. ESA were originally planning to send two other landers with Mars Express, I bet there's people in there now regretting that decision.
Vs lbh pna ernq guvf, ybt bss abj. Tb bhgfvqr. Syl n xvgr.
Does that mean the rover could be "brain dead"? I.e. it's heart could still be working, that's why NASA hears the blips from radio, but it's brain (software or hardware) could be dead, damaged or in some sort of temporary coma caused by environment.
OMG! The martians took yet another one. First they took beagle then spirit. This could mean teh begining of war of the worlds.
Apparenly -- from NY Time article -- new code and/or data being uploaded from Australia was interrupted. It may be that the FLASH was incompletely burned and/or corrupted. This is a common problem. The article refers to some checks made to get an image uploaded, but no details. Is this source public? It would be a good thing if many eyes examined the code for flaws. (The source should be available if it was funded by our tax dollars.)
Ergo, it is a software problem.
Next time, I hope to hell that NASA uses the world's best and most reliable RTOS. That would be QNX, of course.
And no more freakin Java!
"me feel very proud of the human race"
Barf
Power Bus?! Heck, if we gots one of them on Mars, what are we doing piddlin' round with this little rover? Quick -- To the power bus!
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." -- Philip K. Dick
That's nuts when there are billions on the line. What ever happened to a stitch in time?
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." -- Philip K. Dick
It's just been /.ed . Give the server a few days to recover!. Carry on!
Your sig here!
Uhh...that'd be tomorrow, asshole.
Like if they did not have enough time in advance to plan for that little contingency:
"Oh look, we found life! What do we do now?"
Unlikely....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Spirit was about to find evidence of an ancient ocean on Mars, but this would prove too costly for a certain chain of low-end sea food restaurants which recently announced an unusual publicity stunt.
So Spirit had to die . . .
Stefan http://www.longjohnsilvers.com/press/nasa.htm
They shouldn't send stuff to Mars without a means of defending itself.
The 32-bit CPU on Spirit runs at 20 MHz. Since landing time there have been about 2^45 20 MHz cycles. 2^45 is 2^32 times 2^7, or 2^31 times 2^8.
Maybe a value based on a timer encountered an 8-bit overflow condition? Or an every-8-clock-cycles counter reached a 32-bit overflow condition? (Also, 2^7 or 2^31 may be relevant due to a sign bit)
Expect an update to the axis of evil anytime now.
Because we are pink on a green planet?
It deliberately fried a wire because it wants a human to key in the final sequence directly...
I'm building a robot that can fit inside a snack machine and steal the snacks. All it has to do is fit inside the door at the bottom, climb up the snacks and hook or pull whichever one you want. Or all of them. Grab free food and robot and run for it. This is more for the challenge than anything 'cause I hate vending machine food.
Anyway, I can't believe this has not already happened at some technical college with a decent robotics program.
To me, this is really good news. From this, I infer the analog/power/RF arena looks good. Apparently, we have a healthy commlink. Its just that nothing seems to be getting written to the port that XOR's the data with the pseudorandom carrier stream. Yet, the machine has enough intelligence to respond to pings.. so the kernel of the rover's OS seems to be intact. It is sure sounding more and more like a software corruption problem.
I sure hope they left some old-style "monitor" programs that they can access from the kernel and have them download and run some RF modulator diagnostics.
This does not sound near as scary to me as it did this time yesterday. I was fearing total loss of RF transmit capability, as in something messed up in the power amplifier or antenna/aiming mechanisms.
Good luck, JPL. I am going to sign off for tonight, but I sure look forward to seeing where you guys have some fruitful diagnostics run by the time I see this tomorrow. Once you know you can throw bits back at yourself via the UHF link, its then just gotta be a matter of reloading some software. I am sure hoping this to you is like some of the stuff I have fixed... the scariest looking ones ( totally dead ) are usually fixable.
GodSpeed, NASA.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
...VXWorks is dying!
This comment does not exist.
But unfortunatly NASA didn't anticipate finding liquid water on Mars, and so decided to save a few bucks on not water proofing the rovers, which would be fine if Spirit hadn't decided to go for a swim in the puddle it found
Music is everybody's possession.
It's only publishers who think that people own it.
Fuck Beta
~John Lenno
well it's either sabotage by some "other" country.
-or-
JAVA(tm) should have never been invented.
-or-
somw scriptkiddy is using a 1000dbi WI-FI
antenna
-or-
Gee.Buh is just making his support for further
space mission up. first boldly claiming that
nasa can do it then one of his super spy
secret service duds camouflaged as a JPL
engineer heads over to mission control and drops
in some nasty count-down self-destruct code
and Ge.Bu can then allocate the "extra funding"
to the DoD and go conquere some more oil rich
states
-or-
dont' use JAVA(tm) in nuke reactors, airplanes
or in space crafts.
-or-
maybe it's JAVA(tm)?
-or-
there's definitly something fishy going on
mars concerning radio-transmission at.el.
-end of line-
it seemed odd though that more and more
"dark patches" showed up over time on
the public release pics. maybe this was
somekindda slow error build-up?
i'm not american but i'll keep my fingers
crossed JPL will figuere out why spirit
is in the spirit to send data but in a
language (hey maybe spirit's talking
marschen?) they can't decipher.
...Beagle 2 buggered its own transmitter so snuck up behind Spirit and mugged it. Just you wait, Beagle 2 will suddenly start transmitting soon.
Go permanent? In your dreams and my worst nightmares.
Awk! Mea Culpa.
To paraphrase:
"Being out-googled makes me embarassed. Very embarassed indeed."
===========
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
I wonder then. Will a squadron of trained ninja ferrets outperform a squadron of trained ninja monkeys?
OMFG! Funny as hell!!! This brought back all those Marvin the Martian cartoons back into my head!
That was funny, mods. C'mon, it was.
Finally and original joke on slashdot which is not a pun. It doesn't even include a Beowulf Cluster of Hot Soviet Russian Grits which eat you while Natalie Portman watchs. It's good to know the meaning of life is still 42
Ugly bags of mostly water!
$#!^ happens, but why does it always have to happen to me???
The Spirit ops team has made progress in establishing the ability to command the spacecraft, though perhaps only intermittently, and we've established the ability to determine some aspects of the vehicle state. However we do not yet have control of the vehicle, nor do we have an understanding of the vehicle behavior. The immediate goals are to recover control of the vehicle's power state.
There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know what you're talking about. -- John von Neumann
r0v3r$ r b3l0nG 2 uZ!
Perhaps, but if Beagle came looking for Spirit, "Supreme Commander" Charles Tilford of the South Bay Robo-Warriors puts his money on the "Yankee ingenuity" and maneuverability of the American rover. That's what this Battlebots contestant told NPR's Robert Siegel on Friday's radio broadcast of "All Things Considered." You can listen to it in streaming audio here.
I'd have to go with Tilford on this one. Beagle may have gotten a piece of Spirit, but I bet Beagle got trounced in the end. U-S-A! U-S-A!