Debugging The Spirit Rover

Posted by timothy on Saturday February 21, 2004 @05:43PM from the at-a-distance dept.

icebike writes "eeTimes has a story on how the Mars Rover was essentially reprogrammed from millions of miles away. 'How do you diagnose an embedded system that has rendered itself unobservable? That was the riddle a Jet Propulsion Laboratory team had to solve when the Mars rover Spirit capped a successful landing on the Martian surface with a sequence of stunning images and then, darkness.' The outcome strikes me as an extremely Lucky Hack, and the rover could have just as likely been lost forever. Are there lessons here that we can use here on the third rock for recovery of our messed up machines which we manage from afar via ssh?"

2 of 390 comments (clear)

Re:Oh, sure... by kraksmoka · 2004-02-21 18:06 · Score: 1, Troll

actually, i had a saying with my high school sweetheart that would better express this idea. . . . .
its like being on a sea cruise, but different!

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"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
Re:What's the big deal?? by Evil+MarNuke · 2004-02-21 19:42 · Score: 0, Troll

Oh please!! An exploit in ICMP?! It's more likely they have a system like Sun's serial consoles.

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The journey is better then the end.