Mars Exploration News  
MARSDAILY
Spirit Suffers Memory Gaps and Unexplained Resets

Spirit experienced a series of anomalous events beginning on Sol 1872 (April 9, 2009).
by Staff Writers
 Pasadena CA (JPL) Apr 20, 2009
 Spirit failed to wake up for three planned events. The rover eventually woke up from an expiring alarm clock timer 27 hours later. Then, an unexpected reset of the rover occurred on Sol 1874 (April 11, 2009). A second reset occurred on Sol 1875 (April 12, 2009).

It was also discovered that the rover did not record any data in flash memory on sols 1874 and 1876 (April 11 and April 13, 2009).

Sols 1877 and 1878 (April 14 and April 15, 2009) have been normal without any errors or anomalies. At this time, there is no explanation for these anomalies. The rover is power positive with the batteries fully charging each day. All temperatures are well within allowable limits.

The project is systematically resetting sub-systems to bring the rover back to normal operations while continuing to investigate this anomalous behavior. Normal, but cautious, operations are expected by the middle of next week.

As of Sol 1878 (April 15, 2009), Spirit's solar array energy production is 241 watt-hours, with atmospheric opacity (tau) around 0.964.

The dust factor is around 0.316, meaning that about 31.6 percent of sunlight hitting the solar array penetrates the layer of accumulated dust on the array. Spirit's total odometry is 7,726.78 meters (4.80 miles).

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MARSDAILY
Mars Spacecraft Teams On Alert For Dust-Storm Season
 Pasadena CA (JPL) Apr 16, 2009
 Heading into a period of the Martian year prone to major dust storms, the team operating NASA's twin Mars rovers is taking advantage of eye-in-the-sky weather reports.








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