Yesterday morning they uplinked the days instructions and apparently something went wrong somewhere in the rovers software and/or hardware.
They aren't sure if the entire high-gain transmission was received correctly due to rain in Canberra but the software on the rover does error checking on the data so that it wouldn't attempt to run the sequence if any parts were faulty. They had received a UHF carrier signal (the same type that was used during entry to indicate various stages) that indicated that it had received instructions, but other than that no other useful communications were sent back.
Later either the MGS or Odyssey orbiters (I forget which) received a much shorter than expected 2.5 minute UHF signal that contained no data, indicating the radio had been activated by the computers but wasn't being sent actual information.
A short while ago they send a 7.5 bps command to ask the rover to indicate it's status, and it sent a UHF carrier that indicated it was in fault mode, which does at least mean that the receiver, computer, and transmitters are working at least partialy.
They aren't sure if the entire high-gain transmission was received correctly due to rain in Canberra but the software on the rover does error checking on the data so that it wouldn't attempt to run the sequence if any parts were faulty. They had received a UHF carrier signal (the same type that was used during entry to indicate various stages) that indicated that it had received instructions, but other than that no other useful communications were sent back.
Later either the MGS or Odyssey orbiters (I forget which) received a much shorter than expected 2.5 minute UHF signal that contained no data, indicating the radio had been activated by the computers but wasn't being sent actual information.
A short while ago they send a 7.5 bps command to ask the rover to indicate it's status, and it sent a UHF carrier that indicated it was in fault mode, which does at least mean that the receiver, computer, and transmitters are working at least partialy.
Comment