Elderly Spirit rover may have dementia on Mars

William Atkins
Sunday, 01 February 2009 21:10

Science - Space

The scientists are evaluating some of the possible problems that could have resulted in this forgetfulness on the part of Spirit.

They conclude that one possible problem could be the impacting of cosmic particles (commonly called cosmic rays) onto the sensitive electronics within Spirit.

Cosmic particles are energetic quantum particles that come from outer space and impact the surfaces of Earth, Mars, and other bodies in the solar system. Most of cosmic rays are made up of protons, along with minor percentages of helium nuclei (alpha particles) and electrons (beta minus particles).

As of Wednesday (January 28], project manager John Callas reported, "Right now, Spirit is under normal sequence control, reporting good health and responsive to commands from the ground."

Then on Thursday [January 29], the JPL article was updated. It stated, “Diagnostic activities performed by Spirit on Thursday, Jan. 29 narrowed the range of factors that may have contributed to its unexpected behavior earlier in the week. No clear explanation has been established yet. Spirit is healthy and responding to commands. It recorded and returned images of nearby scientific targets.”

It added, “The rover team plans further diagnostics on Friday of Spirit's inertial measurement unit -- a combined gyroscope-and-accelerometer device that measures rover movements and attitude. Spirit may resume driving over the weekend.”

Additional information about Spirit and Opportunity is found on the NASA JPL website “Mars Exploration Rover Mission.”

It is very fortunate that the two little rovers have lasted about twenty times longer than expected. Much more information have been collected than was originally planned for the mission.

Even though such problems are occurring much more frequently than earlier in the mission, these two tiny robotic explorers are still continuing to supply us with valuable information on Mars, which further helps us to understand more about our own planet Earth.