Mars Rover Down? Spirit Stays Silent 91
astroengine writes "One year after NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit stopped communicating with Earth, mission managers have announced that they will give the stranded rover one more month to send a signal before they scale back the search. But things aren't looking good. In the words of JPL-based Mars rover driver Scott Maxwell, 'Spirit was so close to us, just a year ago. Snap your fingers, and she's a hundred million miles distant and we can't even prove she's alive.'"
Re:Why wait a month or year? (Score:2, Interesting)
It's pretty simple. We are now moving into the Martian summer for the southern hemisphere. Spirit went quiet because of the Martian winter at her location, when it got colder and less sunlight per unit area was falling, thus, not enough energy to keep warm and keep operating. They transmitted/received off and on ever since losing communication, but the best chance was waiting until about this time because she should be warming up, getting more sun, and hopefully waking up as peak solar output at the site and for her orientation was reached (as the article mentions, this was on March 10th of this year). Unfortunately, nothing. They try all the backup plans (e.g., if the rover loses track of time it starts transmitting/receiving on specific time windows and communication modes), and if nothing happens after a practical amount of time, they give up, because from now on the amount of power would be in decline.
Closer/further from Earth is irrelevant because the best way to pick up a signal would probably be via the satellites in orbit of Mars as they pass over the site, and direction of the antenna is also irrelevant because they're using the non-directional antenna (i.e. low gain) for the initial communication. Regardless of Mars-Earth position, they're going to try when Spirit is most likely to have the power to communicate.
Spirit is doing just fine! (Score:1, Interesting)
Spirit is doing just fine on Sol 792. Just four days ago one of the rover drivers blogged this:
"The good news is, we have data from Spirit at last! And a lot of it, too -- a whopping 110 Mbits!" [blogspot.com]
Here are some pictures Spirit has taken recently. [nasa.gov]
Is this sloppy Slashdot reporting, or an early April's Fool joke?
Re:Oblig (Score:2, Interesting)