Spirit - 2010 Winter@Troy, The first stationary science campaign Options

[Hungry4info]

As I recall, they'll continue to listen, but not devote as much resources to it. At least until winter. If it's not awake by winter, then it's probably not going to awaken.

[briv1016]

This is from last months Mars Exploration Rovers Update,

"Longer term, we will probably continue with the sweep-and-beep activity, but will probably go from seven times a week, as we are now, to maybe just one or two times a week," Callas continued. "Further, we did program onto the rover before she went to sleep, back in March 2010, one UHF pass per week for the rest of calendar 2011. So we will probably continue to ask the relay orbiters to listen to that one pass a week for the rest of 2011." That means the team will be listeing and reaching out, at least a low level – once a week sweep and beep and once a week UHF – for the rest of the calendar year.

http://www.planetary.org/news/2011/0228_Ma...te_Efforts.html

[PaulM]

A cleaning event could come along at any time -- how 'bout really soon?

I do not think that Spirit is short of power given that its solar panels are perpendicular to the Sun's rays this week and given that any significant dust storm over the last year would have been noticed from orbit.

It is possible that Spirit is now getting so much electrical power that its circuits have been damaged. One Martian year ago Spirit was being given astronomy to do at night to stop it from overheating.

[Stu]

As a wise man once said:

"...as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know."

[marsophile]

This may be a little fanciful but suppose the transmitters are not working, but a receiver is. That might mean we could command Spirit. Following up on Viking Mars' suggestion, is there any command we could send that would produce a result visible from orbit? A drive of course, but anything short of that?

[Hungry4info]

The link briv1016 posted talked specifically about that.

"In addition, the engineers are considering sending other more aggressive commands to the rover, because perhaps Spirit is hearing the signals from Earth, but can't respond for whatever reason, because of more than one failure. "We're going to be sending commands to the rover to try and change the configuration on the vehicle to account for some of these possibilities," Callas said. "But it's a complex thing. When you send commands to change the state of the rover, you don't know if the commands got in and changed the state, so anything you do after that, you have to consider now two possibilities – either they got in or didn't.""

[djellison]

In that context, the 'configuration' of the rover means things like different transmitters etc, not changing it's orientation etc etc. that might be visible from orbit.

Just about the only thing that would be visible from orbit would be driving (but you need to get it out of power fault safe mode first, which you can't do with any confidence without proper downlink) or folding up solar arrays ( motors that have not been actuated in >7 year, and would likely compromise the power situation of the rover, and the power-fault safe mode caveat still applies

[stevesliva]

Revised commanding began March 15, including instructions for the rover to be receptive over UHF relay to hailing from the Mars orbiters for extended periods of time and to use a backup transmitter on the rover.

They're telling it to listen more often in case the clock has drifted a ton, and to use a different transmitter in case the primary is dead.

[MahFL]

I sadly think Spirit is dead.

[ElkGroveDan]

It would be interesting if Spirit could receive but not transmit. (If that is even possible...?) In that case, right before closing the casket they might send the instructions to continue that "swimming" extraction routine that seemed to be working at the very end, and afterward also extend the arm perpendicular to the mid-day sun for a HIRISE image.

[marsophile]

I'm wondering if the heat generated by Spirit is visible at night by the TES instrument on Mars Odyssey? In that case, it might be possible to manipulate that to send a signal. It's a pity the poor rover does not have some laser instrument that could be pointed upwards at night; perhaps that would be visible to HIRISE. One lesson the Mars probes have taught us is the more means of communication, the better.

[djellison]

THEMIS-IR images are 100m/pixel. A rover warm electronics box that's less than a metre in any dimension will be contributing to 1/10,000'th of a pixel.

And HiRISE doesn't image at night.

MER has three communication pathways. For the rover to be functional in a usefull way, one of those would have to work anyway.

[ustrax]

...of course, if anyone else here wants to try that...

Hey, I'm waiting, where did everybody go?

[hendric]

I did a cleaning event here at home, but still didn't see any response.

[ilbasso]

When I do a cleaning event at home, the response I get is, "It's about freakin' time." (from my wife)