The trouble with Rover is revealed: "The trouble with Rover is revealed
By Ron Wilson, EE Times
February 20, 2004 (6:32 p.m. EST)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20040220S0046
SAN MATEO, Calif. � When the Mars rover Spirit went dark on Jan.21 a Jet Propulsion Laboratory team undertook to reprogram the craft's computer only to find themselves introducing an unpredictable sequences of events.
The trouble with the Mars rover Spirit started much earlier in the mission than the day the craft stopped communicating with ground controllers.
'It was recognized just after [the June 2003] launch that there were some serious shortcomings in the code that had been put into the launch load of software,' said JPL data management engineer Roger Klemm. 'The code was reworked, and a complete new memory image was uploaded to the spacecraft and installed on the rover shortly after launch.'
That appeared to fix the problems that had been identified with the initial load. But what no one at JPL could have anticipated was that the new load also made possible a totally implausible sequence of events that would, many months later, silence Spirit. "
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