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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?"
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.
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?
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!
"Oh Goody! My Illudiom Pew36 Explosive Space Modulator!"
[end carrier]
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
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?
No, this ones down to Beagle.
It was never intended to send the EU any data, it's a Special Ops lander.
It's spent the past month hunting down Spirit Rover and maintinaing radio silence.
Spirit will be on the end of a solar powered swiss army knife by now.
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
We all know whats going on, the Martians hot wired it and are joy riding around. The green bastards also painted flames on the side and put a tacky neon license plate mount on the front..
Yes, I must admit that I was hoping more than a little that this news of lost contact would be accompanied by a last few photos taken by the Spirit, showing some shadowy figures approaching the rover and posing for the camera.
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.
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!""
The Jawas came along in their sandcrawler and took the rover. I've seen this before.
http://www.timmorgan.com
Now he can justify that manned mission to Mars: Someone has to go press Ctrl-Alt-Delete on Spirit to reboot it!
"Perhaps a software fault ...
;P
Umm, no, I'm quite sure it's a hardware problem.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
Is one really smart pissed of engineer saying I TOLD YOU THIS WAS GONNA HAPPEN.
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
I have narrowed it down.
1) It is a hardware problem. OR
2) It is a software problem.
I lean towards (1) as nobody that I work with created the software for this device.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
Face it. We're not going to find Mars' WMD until we send troops there.
Oh wait...
> You've obviously never lost your last 75 cents in the snack machine at 3 AM!
I don't see it as losing 75 cents, per se, but gaining a shitload of change when I kick the fuck out of the machine... and I still don't have the damn chips.
Nah, he just stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." - Thomas Jefferson
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
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?
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.
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
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.)
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.
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
The Martians probably just upgraded the codecs.
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!'
was there there was a malfunction between the table saw blade and the Speak & Spell.
You know what?
Hopefully, that would work. However, it will be pretty annoying if all of the images it sends back after that are 16-color 640x480 GIFs with the words "Safe Mode" overlayed in the four corners.
Dont mess with mars..
Ahem. Spirit's on Mars. The MAF failed it. Give credit where it's due - this was a Martian Army operation.
The Martian Air Force gets to try and redeem themselves this weekend.
I'd say something about the Martian Marine Corps, but of course, we can't keep our damn probes working long enough to find out if the Martians need a Marine Corps.
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!
Yes, I must admit that I was hoping more than a little that this news of lost contact would be accompanied by a last few photos taken by the Spirit, showing some shadowy figures approaching the rover and posing for the camera.
here
Table-ized A.I.
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.
Ah, that would be the NSA encryption kicking in. Actually, there was one decipherable message: "I'm sorry, JPL, I can't do that."
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
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.
They sent the second rover, Opportunity, for just this reason: to hold down the F8 key on the Spirit while it reboots.
(Oblique Windows joke.)
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?"
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.
The latest communication feed has just arrived. Strangely, the only imformation transmitted is:
> Y0ur r0v3r i5 0wn3d!
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.
OK, so the Spirit rover rolls into a bar. Rover says to the bartender 'excuse me,' bartender ignores him. Rover again says 'excuse me,' bartender ignores him. Martian says to bartender, 'Why don't you answer him?' bartender says 'I know that type, all they ever want is water.' :)
chris@xanadu:~$ whatis /.
/.: nothing appropriate.