Posted: Thu, Aug 7, 2003, 10:44 AM ET (1444 GMT)
JPL announced late Wednesday that one of the instruments on the Spirit Mars rover is not operating properly and may not be able to return the quality of data expected. In a status report, project officials said the Mossbauer spectrometer on Spirit generated data during a recent inflight test that “did not fit the pattern” expected from normal operations. Project scientists are looking at the test data from that instrument, as well as an identical one on Opportunity that is functioning normally, to track down the problem. They currently believe the problem is with a mechanism within the instrument that rapidly vibrates a gamma-ray source. If the problem isn’t corrected the instrument can still return data, but scientists said it would only be able to detect the presence of iron-bearing minerals, instead of also measuring their relative abundance. All the other instruments on both rovers, including all cameras, are working normally. The two rovers are scheduled to land on Mars in January.

Related Links:

•  NASA/JPL press release
•  AP article