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Reformatting a Machine 125 Million Miles Away

Posted by Soulskill on from the red-rover-red-rover-send-updates-right-over dept.

An anonymous reader writes: NASA's Opportunity rover has been rolling around the surface of Mars for over 10 years. It's still performing scientific observations, but the mission team has been dealing with a problem: the rover keeps rebooting. It's happened a dozen times this month, and the process is a bit more involved than rebooting a typical computer. It takes a day or two to get back into operation every time. To try and fix this, the Opportunity team is planning a tricky operation: reformatting the flash memory from 125 million miles away. "Preparations include downloading to Earth all useful data remaining in the flash memory and switching the rover to an operating mode that does not use flash memory. Also, the team is restructuring the rover's communication sessions to use a slower data rate, which may add resilience in case of a reset during these preparations." The team suspects some of the flash memory cells are simply wearing out. The reformat operation is scheduled for some time in September.

6 of 155 comments (clear)

  1. Hey, Bob, this is Jim by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    We're gonna need you to go out to the rover and reboot it. Yeah, it got stuck. You should probably leave ASAP.

  2. Re:And I thought I was cool... by marcello_dl · · Score: 4, Funny

    And I thought I was cool when I reboot servers around the world thinking I am rebooting mine.

    --
    ---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
  3. ECC? by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 5, Funny

    They didn't do any ECC on the flash memory? I thought these people were rocket scientists.

    --
    I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
  4. Err, if you're a system admin.. by Viol8 · · Score: 4, Funny

    ... you're not cool. Period. Sorry.

    1. Re:Err, if you're a system admin.. by TeknoHog · · Score: 3, Funny

      Chill out. They're just having that time of the month.

      --
      Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
  5. Re: Simple fix by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Ass-burgers.