The day 1K bug

Posted on October 30, 2006
Filed Under All, Photos, Technology |

Opportunity Rover 'self-portrait'

Apparently, the Mars Rover designers did not anticipate their craft would endure much beyond the 90 days of the original mission plan. As both Spirit and Opportunity came up to their 1000th sol (the Mars day, consisting of 24 hours, 39 minutes, 35 seconds), engineers realized an upgrade would be necessary: the machine’s day counters would only go up to 999. Spirit, parked on a Sunny hillside for the duration of Martian winter, is already into its 1004th sol, and apparently is working fine, thanks to the upgrade. Opportunity, which is canvassing an interesting crater called Victoria, has also been upgraded - it’s 16 sols away from clocking 1000. These are probably the two coolest machines in the Solar System… pic above is a ‘self-portrait‘ of Opportunity… Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell

Comments

8 Responses to “The day 1K bug”

  1. David on October 30th, 2006 4:16 pm

    Presumably, if it’s being updated remotely, it’s a *software* day counter. Yet it counts in decimal?

  2. cg on October 30th, 2006 9:47 pm

    Yup the counters were implemented in software… unknown why they were implemented in decimal rather than binary or hex…

  3. Alex Bird on October 30th, 2006 9:55 pm

    Hey Chris…(this is Greg’s son)…i just wanted to wish you well with everything! Also, I love all the pictures.

    -Alex

  4. cg on October 30th, 2006 10:17 pm

    Hey Alex… hear your having many adventures… give us a shout if you ever decide to settle down in the computer science biz…

  5. gfbird on October 30th, 2006 10:51 pm

    What a fascinating surface fracture pattern - like dry-pan mud or broken ice, neither of which happen, as I understand, on Mars. Especially curious is that it looks like the fracture pattern may have been crushed away where the Rover tracks are at the top of the photo - or just that the Rover chose a fracture-free path. Also, are the darker fractures to the left a result of heaving due to the Rover’s weight, casting shadows?

    You sure know how to pick pictures, Chris.

  6. cg on October 31st, 2006 8:34 pm

    Rover pix: you got to check out your and my and our fellow taxpayers pix on the Mars Rover site:

    Spirit pix, Opportunity pix

    One of my favorite photo sites ever… up there with favs like James Nachtwey and Richard Avedon… I love robot photgraphers working far, far away…

  7. Alex Bird on October 31st, 2006 10:44 pm

    computer science? its one of my top major choices. could i send you some java apps ive made?

  8. Earth Satelite on August 15th, 2007 1:14 am

    Earth Satelite…

    I couldn’t understand some parts of this article, but it sounds interesting…

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