NASA scientists says they have lost contact with the robot rover Spirit on Mars and are unsure what has caused the problem.

Spirit project manager Pete Theisinger told a news briefing on Thursday that there was a "very serious anomaly" in communications with the six-wheeled craft, which landed on Mars on January 3 on a planned three month mission to explore the geologic history of the planet.

Theisinger said scientists had been unable to communicate with Spirit for about 24 hours, adding that scientists had so far been unable to explain the source of the problem.

Maybe there IS life on Mars after all and Spirit has decided that they are more fun than we are.

Anyone got their own ideas?

Current story on BBC :

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3421071.stm

"There is no single fault that explains all the observables."

There is if they are using anything from Microsoft !

Maybe its crashed into the Beagle 2

No wonder it's broken down... it's a Rover :P

(Credit goes to that guy who e-mailed BBC Breakfast)

Are we sure it's not the beagle who's called Rover?

Not sure if that's a real question? But yes, the Nasa machine is the one called Rover (http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/)

Ahh... wait... as in it's called Rover because a beagle is a dog?

Spirit has managed to speak again for a couple of short periods...

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The US space agency said the first communication with Spirit occurred at 1234 GMT and lasted for 10 minutes. The data rate was weak at 10 bits per second.

The second contact came at 1326 GMT and lasted 20 minutes. On this occasion, the data was fed at a rate of 120 bits per second.

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Originally posted by Geoff
Not sure if that's a real question? But yes, the Nasa machine is the one called Rover (http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/)

Ahh... wait... as in it's called Rover because a beagle is a dog?

Perhaps the next two craft to go to Mars will be called Labrador and Fido.

i remember reading a book by Harry Turtledove about a mission to Mars. The last thing that the probe sent back was a picture of a martian with a length of 4x2 about to clobber it :lol:

Obvious what's happened init !!!?

The martians have switched it off ... cos they don't want us spying on em ..

Rover up and running again.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/040202/325/ekxxl.html

Apparently they have fixed it by deleting some files from Spirit's on board memory. Personally I think being able to fix a computer on the surface of Mars is quite an achievement. Damn clever those NASA people.

for anyone interested, there is going to be a conferance for the science world tomorrow about if humans should goto mars or not :)

T'old Colin Pillenger is leading it IIRC :thumbsup:

As if our opinions matter anyway....

They'll go with or without consent and who can blame them, i'd be glad to get off this planet if i had a chance.

Wilf