MARS ROVER COMMUNICATES WITH EARTH

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Delivered-To: dfarber+ () ux13 sp cs cmu edu
Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 12:13:53 -0500
From: "Jonathan M. Smith" <jms () cis upenn edu>
Subject: FYI
X-Sender: jms () central cis upenn edu
To: farber () cis upenn edu

MARS ROVER COMMUNICATES WITH EARTH
from The Washington Post

The Mars rover Spirit communicated with Earth this morning after a long
period of silence that had confounded NASA engineers.

NASA officials did not say that the communications problems were resolved,
however, declaring that they wanted to conduct additional tests in the next
few hours.

NASA announced that an antenna complex near Madrid, Spain received a signal
that lasted ten minutes at 7.34 EST this morning. They did not elaborate on
the quality or nature of the signal.

The announcement followed a day of tension and concern. Yesterday, worried
engineers said that Spirit, the robot explorer that landed safely on Mars
three weeks ago, had developed a serious but unknown problem that was
stifling its communications with Earth, and might have gone into a kind of
defensive crouch to wait for a long-distance rescue.
http://snipurl.com/40pj

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