[meteorite-list] Mars Exploration Rover Mission Status - January 23, 2004

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:32:08 2004
Message-ID: <200401240350.TAA28397_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

Guy Webster (818) 354-5011
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Donald Savage (202) 358-1547
NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.

News Release: 2004-033 January 23, 2004
                                                        5 p.m. PST

Mars Exploration Rover Mission Status

NASA's Spirit rover did not go to sleep today even after ground
controllers sent commands twice for it to do so.

Shortly before noon, controllers were surprised to receive a
relay of data from Spirit via the Mars Odyssey orbiter. Spirit
sent 73 megabits at a rate of 128 kilobits per second. The
transmission included power subsystem engineering data, no
science data, and several frames of "fill data." Fill data are
sets of intentionally random numbers that do not provide
information.

Spirit had not communicated successfully through Odyssey since
the rover's communications difficulties began on Wednesday.

Spirit's twin, Opportunity, will reach Mars at 05:05 Universal
Time on Jan. 25 (12:05 a.m. Sunday EST or 9:05 p.m. Saturday
PST) at a landing site on the opposite side of the planet from
Spirit.

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology,
Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration Rover project for
NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C.
Additional information about the project is available from
JPL at

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov

and from Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., at

http://athena.cornell.edu/ .

                              -end-
Received on Fri 23 Jan 2004 10:50:48 PM PST