Second Mars rover (Opportunity) having problems

[frogfromthenorth2]

SNIP

"Mission manager Jim Erickson told reporters said the power loss appeared to be from one of the craft's heating units that keeps turning itself on and running overnight without receiving commands from NASA to do so.

While engineers do not believe the faulty thermostat will overheat the vehicle, the long-term consequences of the glitch and whether it can be fixed are not yet known, Erickson said. "


http://edition.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/01/28/space.mars.reut/index.html

[snooper2]

1. Lets Go to Mars!

Little side note:

A developer friend at work was telling me about the software problems they where having. Deals with memory issues and what not, but you know what they wrote the code in for those Rovers...

Java, no shit...

Stupid stupid but of course fast and cheap...

[Flagg]

2. Meanwhile Mars express made in Europe and yes France

works like a charm
well the Beagle is missing but it was built in Britain (the 51st state)

[middleoftheroad2]

8. huh? NASA is doing a GREAT job

Of the 5 alive spacecraft studying Mars, 4 are from NASA. The NASA Mars Global Surveyor has been mapping Mars for some time.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/current/marsglobalsurveyor.html

[saigon68]

17. Britain (the 51st state)

Not really-- Britain is the 54th stae after the states of

51. Iraq-Nam

52. Afghan-Nam

53. The State of Confusion

:-)

[Ganja Ninja]

19. You left out the 55th state.

The state of Amnesia our most current state.

[ixion]

5. heh... don't blame it on java

blame it on the coders who wrote it. Java is a perfectly acceptable solution for a project like this. But if your coders don't write and run tests for it, it will fail, just like so much MS .net and C++ code.

[sendero]

13. Ok...

... I'll blame it on Java. A high level language should not be used in a mission critical application. Period.

It astounds me that they'd do that - but then again it doesn't. It just reaffirms my belief that NASA is HOPELESS.

[Zero Gravitas]

14. It isn't

the original poster is mistaken. The rover does not run on java! they use java in the apps they use on the ground to "drive" it, the software running ON the the rover is NOT java.

[Zero Gravitas]

11. nope

They use java on the ground but not on the rover itself. the issue with not allowing enough memory to cache the flash memory file system meta data in RAM is very embaressing though. At least its easy to fix: delete the old files, duh!

[Chico Man]

15. Jeez and I thought they would have used C#

I wonder what type of memory issues they are experiencing with java, since it is a "safe" language with "garbage collecting" build in.

[Zero Gravitas]

16. They're not using Java!

The Rover use Wind River's RTOS VxWorks and the software was developed using their "Tornado" development environment (C/C++).

[yella_dawg]

20. You have to be shittin' me..

They wrote robot code in Java? Are they insane?

No wonder the things are crapping out.

Even NASA has been infiltrated by idiots.

[Zero Gravitas]

21. oh ha ha

I give up :eyes:

grumble grumble ;)

[pintobean]

3. Anyone see Leno last night?

He said the reason we were having problems with the rover was because we parked it in the wrong neighborhood. He then showed a pic of the rover on the surface of mars. It was stripped down, up on blocks, and had "earth sucks" spray painted on it. I've been searching for the pic on line, but can't find it. If anyone comes across it, would you please post the link?

[Heyo]

4. This was a bogus headline

The rover is doing so excelent, and so far is a resounding success beyond their wildest dreams.. and they had this small anomaly that was mentioned by nasa as barely being anything at all, the shoulder joint heater for the IDD, and the headline says "Second Rover Experiencing Problems" blah blah blah.

It sickens me.

The headline is really misleading...seems like they WANT Nasa to fail.

I guess the news doesn't sell unless it's some disaster or someone's failure.

Heyo

[pintobean]

9. I agree Heyo.

I am excited by the success of the Mars missions. I didn't see the Leno thing as a dig on JPL; I saw it as a dig on society.

[Heyo]

10. I agree with you there, too..

I didn't see the Leno thing but read the description.. I actually think that's really funny.. no problem with Jay.

My beef is with the choice of headlines made by some news orginizations.

I've always got a :toast: in me for the space program....

Heyo

[SpiralHawk]

6. Can't "get it up" on Mars

BushCo does seem to be suffering a bout of impotence on Mars. Too bad.

I do hope they will all tune into the Super Bowl this weekend, for I understand the top three advertisers will be "male erectile-dysfunction products," such as Viagra.

Perhaps the BushCo Boners will get a bright idea. Actually, I hope not. The world is hardly deficient in (Skull and) Boners. No 'unnatural' additives are needed.

[Heyo]

7. Watching daily NASA update now...

All positive, go NASA!

And screw the media who cut away from the news conf. the night Opportunity landed.

:toast:

Heyo

[Comadreja]

12. Problem detected...

[EV1Ltimm]

18. i'd have to say so...

none of this would have happened if they outfitted the rovers with slim whitman lp's.