The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) team operating Spirit will begin diagnostic tests to determine the cause of Sunday's glitches. "Our next steps will be diagnostic activities." One theory holds that the rover's electronics could have been damaged by a cosmic ray - a fast-moving particle from the or elsewhere in the galaxy. As of the rover seems to have recovered and is responsive to commands from Earth. Engineers tried to determine Spirit's precise location on by locating the with the rover's camera. Another anomaly, according to Nasa, was that the day's activities were not saved to the rover's long-term memory.
"We don't have a good explanation yet for the way Spirit has been acting for the past few days," said JPL team leader Randi Laubach. "Right now, Spirit is under normal sequence control, reporting good health and responsive to. The rover Spirit failed to jesselyn out directions it received on its 1800th day on the Martian surface. The rover reported receiving its instructions but pictures at the beginning and the end of the day sho that it had not moved. The rover follo commands and located the but not in the location in the sky that Spirit anticipated. Whatever the cause, the problem appears to have corrected itself. |