wil it to be

I've got cramps in my fingers from keeping them crossed :-) so I'm glad to have run across Wil Wheaton's Spirit post where he suggests a less physically damaging approach.

So if anyone reading this could, you know, maybe look up toward Mars tonight, and send a little Mojo to Spirit, that'd be cool.

I'm gonna step outside and push some good wishes toward the red planet and if you're so inclined, feel free to join us. When you get back inside, head over to Wil's site and read about this lucky guy's trip to JPL and his interviews with Joy Crisp and Julie Townsend (yeah, the science and engineering leads from the briefings! how cool is that!)

Somehow I missed Steve Squyres' post on the recent communications problem. I hope Steve's not bothered by my reposting it wholsale here but he doesn't have permalinks or even anchors for his posts so this seems like the best way to preserve it.

We've just hit the first significant bump in the road since Spirit landed. By now you've heard the news that we've been having communications problems with our rover. It's cause for concern, certainly, but it's not cause for alarm. I've been in this business for almost 25 years now, and I've been involved in over a dozen different planetary missions. I don't know of a single one that hasn't had a problem like this somewhere along the line, and I include in that list missions like Voyager and Magellan that were spectacular successes. This kind of thing is part of the business of operating complicated spacecraft far from Earth.

There are two reasons to be optimistic. One is that Spirit is very, very good at keeping itself safe. This vehicle knows how to protect itself when something goes wrong, and can do so for long periods of time. The other reason for optimism is that the MER engineering team is very, very good at figuring out what's going on when something goes wrong. Given enough time they're going to get it, and I expect Spirit to give them all the time they need. So I'm very optimistic that we'll get this straightened out, and get back to the business of exploring Gusev crater.

Thanks Steve, for the status update. You guys rock.

Posted by asa at January 22, 2004 09:54 PM