Hasta La Gadget!

Mars Rover mission managers over at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. reported that the Spirit rover blanked out and became disoriented, according to the New York Times.

On Sunday, Spirit’s 1,800th day on the Mars surface, the rover acknowledged receiving instructions from Earth but then didn’t move. Later that day, it appeared to completely forget what it had done earlier that morning; usually, the rover records everything in non-volatile memory. “It’s almost as if the rover had a bout of amnesia,” said John Callas, the project manager for the rovers, in the article.

Another system in the rover recorded that power was being drained from the batteries for about 90 minutes, so something was going on, although before and after photos showed that the rover went absolutely nowhere, the report said. On Monday, an order to photograph the sun came out different than expected; the rover took the photo out of position. The article said that one hypothesis is a cosmic ray hit the electronics and scrambled the rover’s memory, but just that one time.

Now, everything is back to normal; the rover is responding to commands and appears to be operating just fine. (Artwork credit: NASA)