Martian Core Dump

I gotta admit, at least it’s more interesting than if the thing had just gone completely silent.  Apparently Spirit decided to uplink 73 megabits of data at 128 kbits per second yesterday morning, including “power subsystem engineering data” and “several frames of fill data”. 

Since Opportunity (due to land tomorrow) is identical to Spirit, perhaps if they can figure out what the problem is, they can send fresh code to Opportunity before it slips on the same banana peal.

That is, of course, assuming that it lands and starts talking succesfully at all…

NASA warns that even in the best of circumstances, it may be a significant amount of time—perhaps two weeks—before they will be “restoring functionality” to Spirit.

Two weeks?  They must be using the home improvement contractors I always end up with—it’s ALWAYS “two weeks”. 

Is it just me, or is Mars beginning to seem like the planetary equivalent of Charlie Brown’s Kite-Eating Tree?

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