spacetoday.net: Weather slows down Spirit activities

Posted: Thu, Jan 22, 2004, 11:04 AM ET (1604 GMT)
Mars Exploration Rover (NASA/JPL)

A terrestrial thunderstorm apparently disrupted communications between flight controllers and NASA's Mars rover Spirit on Wednesday, preventing the spacecraft from carrying out planned scientific work. The day's commands were transmitted to the rover from the Deep Space Network facility near Canberra, Australia, during a thunderstorm. While the rover acknowledged receiving the commands, it did not carry them out nor did it transmit data back to Earth. Controllers believe that the storm interfered with the transmission of the commands enough that they were too weak to be properly received and interpreted by the rover. The spacecraft instead carried out a "master sequence" of commands that covers rover housekeeping issues but no scientific work. No reason was given why the rover did not reestablish communications with Earth last yesterday, although project officials said that they experienced similar glitches with the Mars Pathfinder mission in 1997 that were remedied within a day or so.