April 1st it was determined that our tough little Spirit rover with her belly stuck on a rock has finally gone to sleep. Hopefully not dead, but just hibernating until the spring sunlight can warm and light her panels again to wake up. The rover will be in a hibernation mode where the computer will check every now and then for enough charge on the batteries to phone home. Right now, the batteries are too low to do anything but sleep, kind of like when you put your laptop in "hibernation" mode. You know that mode, you open the screen on your computer and you have to cycle the power again since Windows screws up and won't start properly? Ha!
Let's hope that Spirit's software does better than that.
She could be sleeping forever, but let's keep hope that the little rover will wake up again in a few months and show us the new views of Troy where she has become a "lander" rather than a "rover".
Sleep well Spirit, and we'll be listening for your call in spring......hopefully....*sniff* :-(
The last self portrait taken of Spirit we'll see for a while (Actually this was from last summer, but it's a good one).
(
Credit to Stu at Cumbrian Sky for the image)
2 comments:
Ha! Spirit worked beautifully for six years. It can't POSSIBLY be running Windows!
No way! If it was running Windows the thing would have blue screened on day 91, started rebooting frantically while nagging to start in safe mode, but there wouldn't be anyone to push F8, CTL-ALT-DEL or run scandisk. The rover would have endlessly rebooted itself to death. :-)
Post a Comment