5 ms·

Spirit (Mars Rover) Sol 18 Anomaly

30 points by vinutheraj 17y ago

nostrademons 17y ago
Lesson for engineers: build lots and lots of debugging hooks and panic buttons into your systems. You'll need them. I find it interesting that the initial problem amounted to what was basically a memory leak. It affects Martian rovers just as much as Firefox! I also find it amazing that as of now, the Mars rovers have been working for over 2000 sols. For what was initially supposed to be a 90-day mission. When the blog post was written, they were at 937 sols and the author thought that was long.
- dandelany 17y ago
  > Lesson for engineers: build lots and lots of debugging hooks and panic buttons into your systems. You'll need them. Exactly... Especially when your hardware is 30 million miles away :) > I also find it amazing that as of now, the Mars rovers have been working for over 2000 sols. Me too, although when I looked it up, I found out that Spirit has been stuck in a patch of soft ground since May... NASA engineers have been testing plans on earth to get it unstuck. Photos here: http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/ http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/ (start at 5/1). Hopefully they're as good at debugging mud as they are at software!
windsurfer 17y ago
This reminds me of yesterday, when I accidental left a stray : in my /etc/sudoers file and exited my editor. Couldn't get root access! Thanked the developers who invented recovery mode so I could fix my dumb mistake.
shaddi 17y ago
Just thought I'd point out (as a departing JPL intern...) that Spirit just reached sol 2000 on Tuesday, more than five years after its original 90 sol mission. Even though it is still stuck (Free Spirit!), it's still performing useful science, as is its twin Opportunity on the other side of the planet. Great rovers and a great team at JPL who build and keep them running. I can't wait to see MSL touch down in a couple years.
- nostrademons 17y ago
  I think that needs to be a new Internet meme: "Free Spirit!" with a link to the Mars Rovers page.
  - shaddi 17y ago
    Go for it: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/freespirit/ http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/freespirit/ :)

30 points by vinutheraj 17y ago

Lesson for engineers: build lots and lots of debugging hooks and panic buttons into your systems. You'll need them. I find it interesting that the initial problem amounted to what was basically a memory leak. It affects Martian rovers just as much as Firefox! I also find it amazing that as of now, the Mars rovers have been working for over 2000 sols. For what was initially supposed to be a 90-day mission. When the blog post was written, they were at 937 sols and the author thought that was long.

dandelany 17y ago
> Lesson for engineers: build lots and lots of debugging hooks and panic buttons into your systems. You'll need them. Exactly... Especially when your hardware is 30 million miles away :) > I also find it amazing that as of now, the Mars rovers have been working for over 2000 sols. Me too, although when I looked it up, I found out that Spirit has been stuck in a patch of soft ground since May... NASA engineers have been testing plans on earth to get it unstuck. Photos here: http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/ http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/ (start at 5/1). Hopefully they're as good at debugging mud as they are at software!

windsurfer 17y ago

This reminds me of yesterday, when I accidental left a stray : in my /etc/sudoers file and exited my editor. Couldn't get root access! Thanked the developers who invented recovery mode so I could fix my dumb mistake.

shaddi 17y ago

Just thought I'd point out (as a departing JPL intern...) that Spirit just reached sol 2000 on Tuesday, more than five years after its original 90 sol mission. Even though it is still stuck (Free Spirit!), it's still performing useful science, as is its twin Opportunity on the other side of the planet. Great rovers and a great team at JPL who build and keep them running. I can't wait to see MSL touch down in a couple years.

nostrademons 17y ago
I think that needs to be a new Internet meme: "Free Spirit!" with a link to the Mars Rovers page.
- shaddi 17y ago
  Go for it: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/freespirit/ http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/freespirit/ :)