SCI/TECH: CONTACT LOST WITH SPIRIT ROVER

A communications relay session using NASA�s Mars Global Surveyor at 3:10AM�GMT Friday resulted in no contact with Spirit. Engineers are preparing to listen for signals and possibly send commands to restore normal communication with the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit during the martian day that begins about 3 a.m. PST Friday.

marsrovers.nasa.gov...

Space.com
The robot has suffered a still unidentified problem, preventing it from transmitting any data since early Wednesday. Engineers continue to underscore hope of recovering the robot, returning it to full-time operation. However, they also caution that the situation remains serious.


[Edited on 26-1-2004 by SkepticOverlord]

I don't believe this. I haven't heard anything from the news channels yet...or their web sites.

Originally posted by TheConservative
I don't believe this. I haven't heard anything from the news channels yet...or their web sites.

Thats because i'm faster.

CNN just got it.

Article Here

Spirit project manager Pete Theisinger told a news briefing that there was a "very serious anomaly" in communications

[Edited on 22-1-2004 by BlackJackal]

i just heard it on local news.

hmmmm..very interesting stuff...btw is the other rover that scheduled for the 24th landing in the same area as Spirit???

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Originally posted by worldwatcher
i just heard it on local news.

hmmmm..very interesting stuff...btw is the other rover that scheduled for the 24th landing in the same area as Spirit???

Opportunity is due to land on the 24th but on the other side of the planet so that they can have atleast one rover going at all times, making use of sunlight.

Originally posted by exdog
www.abovetopsecret.com...

I think that this is a total loss of communications now.

got this off the bbc news page not much there but just a insight as to what going on

news.bbc.co.uk...

This news is only a few minutes old yet they've put reports together, the timeliness of articles leads me to believe that they've been canned, pre-written for this situation.

Hows that for confidence?

Originally posted by Nerdling

Originally posted by TheConservative
I don't believe this. I haven't heard anything from the news channels yet...or their web sites.

Thats because i'm faster.

CNN just got it.

You said that they lost contact. NASA has not received a single transmission that was expected to come in today. THey have not lost total contact with the rovers.

...damned terrorists.

Originally posted by tr
...damned terrorists.

LMAO Thats the funniest thing I have heard in a while.

Originally posted by tr
...damned terrorists.

It wans't the terrorist.. it's the Aliens..

or terrorist aliens.. ????

could the disruption in contact be blamed on solar or geomagnetic activity? hopefully whatever it is, it is temporary.


don't know much about solar activity but this site says:

Forecast
The geomagnetic field is expected to be quiet to unsettled on January 21 and active to major storm on January 22 when a CME is expected to impact Earth. Mostly quiet to unsettled is expected for January 23-26

www.dxlc.com...

Originally posted by tr
...damned terrorists.

Nooo!

Its designed like an SUV! it probably tried to take a corner and flipped over. I bet its gas tank exploded after that killing every circuit on board

Originally posted by BlackJackal

Originally posted by exdog
www.abovetopsecret.com...

I think that this is a total loss of communications now.

I Hope Not!!!

I was reading a little bit elsewhere on the site about the whole 8ghz (i think) transmission system it's using to beam info back to us. I wonder if it's just suffering from cell phone syndrome and is in a bad service area. Quite an unscientific idea, I admit, but the thought arises based on my own experiences with how crappy and unreliable wireless communication can be. Who knows? Weather patters? Magnetic disruptions?

Just a thought.

In all seriousness as I have said before I think that Mars has fluctuating gravity. The rover could have just experienced a gravity spike causing the weight of the rover to increase and causing the solar panels or some other part of the rover to break under its increased weight.

Theory Here:

Two years ago, following the detection of a strongly magnetized ancient crust on Mars, David J. Stevenson, professor of planetary science at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) published a theory that "Mars probably has a liquid, conductive outer core and might have a solid inner core like Earth," in a review article in the journal Nature in 2001. However, if Mars had a core like earths then it would possess atleast a small magnetic field which it does not. The lack of a modern day magnetic field on Mars has until recently been explained away by saying that the core of Mars is completly solid.

According to the data returned by the Mars Global Surveyor, Viking 1 & 2, and the Mars Pathfinder scientists discovered that the core of Mars was completly liquid. If the core is completely made of liquid then the only way to not produce a magnetic field is for the liquid not to be spinning. This none spinning hot liquid would be greatly succeptable to the pull of the suns gravity. If this is true then just as the sun and moon act to create high and low tides on earth the gravity of the sun pulling on a completely liquid core could cause high and low gravity tides by displacing mass to one side of the planet.

This is the reason I beleive so many missions fail, because we do not yet know how to perdict when the gravity will be high, low, or as expected.

Lets say we send a probe up for orbit and it comes in at a high gravity time then the altitude for orbit would need to be higher than orginally calculated and if its not the probe will never achieve orbit and crash to the planet.

have read several times that the orbits of the successful orbiters do have minor fluctuations. The probes that make it to Mars orbit I beleive make it at a normal gravity time when the mass of Mars is evenly distributed and gravity acts as it normally should for the most part.

Phobos cricles Mars every 7.7 hours or roughly 3 times a day. Deimos does so within 35 hours which is incredible rates. This alone is not much info but if you take the idea that both moons are captured asteroids then the speed of the moons seems a little strange.

If you take the example of spinning around with a hold on a rope and at the other end you have tied a brick. You start spinning and pull the brick in closer to you and your spinning and the bricks rotation will increase. Now push it out further than it was to begin with and you will slow back down a little. If you were to continue this cycle of pushing out the brick and pulling it in you would achieve a net speed gain. So is the same with the gravity pull of Mars pushing and pulling on Phobos and Deimos.

Also Phobos has a massively degrading oribit and is doomed to crash into Mars. Phobos is snugging up to the red planet at a rate of 6 feet every 50 or 100 years, I forget exactly which one. Phobos will either crash into Mars in 50 million years or be sheared by the gravity and become a ring.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

www.space.com... PASADENA, Calif. -- Mars Rover officials at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced Thursday that "a serious anomaly" occurred onboard the robot Spirit Wednesday stopping the transmission of direct data for almost 24 hours. Peter Theisinger, Mars Exploration Rover project manager, began Thursday's press conference by telling reporters that they had not received contact from Spirit, either through relays from the Mars Global Surveyor or the Mars Odyssey spacecraft now orbiting the red planet.