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Mars Spirit Falls Silent

Aired January 22, 2004 - 15:03   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Well, a sputtering Spirit and a crestfallen crew of scientists. The Martian rover that has beamed back breathtaking vistas while preparing to dig into rocks and soil has been virtually incommunicado since yesterday.
Live from co-anchor and CNN space correspondent Miles O'Brien, up live for us now in Pasadena for the disquieting development.

Miles, what's the latest?

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Well, Kyra, if phoning home is just not enough when you're talking about this business, the Spirit rover has, in fact, communicated with engineers here at Pasadena's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The problem is, the quality of the communication is not what they would hope for. They want those cards and letters to keep coming. And right now, they're not getting them. The reason, inexplicable right now. As a matter of fact, a lot of very smart engineers here scratching their head, wondering why, after 17 days of these wonderful images from the surface of Mars, suddenly, out of the pink Martian sky, things went south, and south in a big way.

This tone indicates there is trouble on board the Spirit rover. But because all they're getting is the tone, it's very difficult to diagnose what the trouble is.

Joining us now to talk a little bit about where the team stands right now and where do they go from here is Firouz Naderi, who is in charge of the Mars programs here at the Jet Propulsion Lab.

First of all, give us an update. You haven't had an opportunity to hear from the spacecraft since that earlier briefing, when the announcement was made. Sometime this evening, there may be a chance to hear something from it. Why don't you explain that?

FIROUZ NADERI, MARS PROGRAM MANAGER, JPL: Miles, we have multiple ways of talking to this spacecraft.

Some of them is direct and some of them is relayed through satellites. Sometime this evening, the rover will be woken up, like it was last night. The alarm clock will go off and it will tell it something is going overhead. Talk to it. Last night, it did. It did wake up, tried to talk to us. But the envelopes that it sent us had no content.

O'BRIEN: So just the fact that it's able to wake up at the prescribed time, send a tone signal, tells you that at least some big portion of that rover is operative?

NADERI: Exactly.

And also, then, on top of that, this morning, we tried to talk to it in a channel, if I can use that terminology, that the rover tunes to, to listen if it thinks it is in some kind of a fault state. And when we talked to it on that channel, lo and behold, the respondent says, I can hear you. So it thinks it is in some kind of a fault condition, and at least it acknowledges that it hears us.

O'BRIEN: If you just keep getting tones, what do you start doing? How can you troubleshoot in the blind this way? How can you raise more significant communication?

NADERI: OK.

Right now, the tone that is sending back is just an acknowledgment that it hears from us. It has no content about the health status of the rover. We're hoping, now that we think we have a channel open to it, is to tell it, tell us more about yourself. And when it sends back engineering data, we hope to use that to diagnose what may be ailing it.

O'BRIEN: OK. And, of course, the worrisome catch-22 would be, whatever is required to send back that data could itself be broken. And then you're really in the blind.

NADERI: And that always is the issue. So long as we can have a two-way communication with a patient, we'll be able hopefully to diagnose it. This is a serious problem. But I also don't want to get to the point saying that, you know, we have exhausted our resources. We've just gotten started.

O'BRIEN: All right, Firouz Naderi, who is head of the Mars programs here, very early in this game. These are the kinds of things that engineers train and simulate for time and again.

And, quite frankly, they're very good at tackling these problems and trying to come up with solutions. So it's way too early to tell. What compounds things, though, Kyra, is, we're just a few days away from Spirit's twin arriving on the other side of Mars, Opportunity due to land Saturday night. The team is going to be stretched, to say the least -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Miles, thank you.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com







Aired January 22, 2004 - 15:03   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Well, a sputtering Spirit and a crestfallen crew of scientists. The Martian rover that has beamed back breathtaking vistas while preparing to dig into rocks and soil has been virtually incommunicado since yesterday.
Live from co-anchor and CNN space correspondent Miles O'Brien, up live for us now in Pasadena for the disquieting development.

Miles, what's the latest?

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Well, Kyra, if phoning home is just not enough when you're talking about this business, the Spirit rover has, in fact, communicated with engineers here at Pasadena's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The problem is, the quality of the communication is not what they would hope for. They want those cards and letters to keep coming. And right now, they're not getting them. The reason, inexplicable right now. As a matter of fact, a lot of very smart engineers here scratching their head, wondering why, after 17 days of these wonderful images from the surface of Mars, suddenly, out of the pink Martian sky, things went south, and south in a big way.

This tone indicates there is trouble on board the Spirit rover. But because all they're getting is the tone, it's very difficult to diagnose what the trouble is.

Joining us now to talk a little bit about where the team stands right now and where do they go from here is Firouz Naderi, who is in charge of the Mars programs here at the Jet Propulsion Lab.

First of all, give us an update. You haven't had an opportunity to hear from the spacecraft since that earlier briefing, when the announcement was made. Sometime this evening, there may be a chance to hear something from it. Why don't you explain that?

FIROUZ NADERI, MARS PROGRAM MANAGER, JPL: Miles, we have multiple ways of talking to this spacecraft.

Some of them is direct and some of them is relayed through satellites. Sometime this evening, the rover will be woken up, like it was last night. The alarm clock will go off and it will tell it something is going overhead. Talk to it. Last night, it did. It did wake up, tried to talk to us. But the envelopes that it sent us had no content.

O'BRIEN: So just the fact that it's able to wake up at the prescribed time, send a tone signal, tells you that at least some big portion of that rover is operative?

NADERI: Exactly.

And also, then, on top of that, this morning, we tried to talk to it in a channel, if I can use that terminology, that the rover tunes to, to listen if it thinks it is in some kind of a fault state. And when we talked to it on that channel, lo and behold, the respondent says, I can hear you. So it thinks it is in some kind of a fault condition, and at least it acknowledges that it hears us.

O'BRIEN: If you just keep getting tones, what do you start doing? How can you troubleshoot in the blind this way? How can you raise more significant communication?

NADERI: OK.

Right now, the tone that is sending back is just an acknowledgment that it hears from us. It has no content about the health status of the rover. We're hoping, now that we think we have a channel open to it, is to tell it, tell us more about yourself. And when it sends back engineering data, we hope to use that to diagnose what may be ailing it.

O'BRIEN: OK. And, of course, the worrisome catch-22 would be, whatever is required to send back that data could itself be broken. And then you're really in the blind.

NADERI: And that always is the issue. So long as we can have a two-way communication with a patient, we'll be able hopefully to diagnose it. This is a serious problem. But I also don't want to get to the point saying that, you know, we have exhausted our resources. We've just gotten started.

O'BRIEN: All right, Firouz Naderi, who is head of the Mars programs here, very early in this game. These are the kinds of things that engineers train and simulate for time and again.

And, quite frankly, they're very good at tackling these problems and trying to come up with solutions. So it's way too early to tell. What compounds things, though, Kyra, is, we're just a few days away from Spirit's twin arriving on the other side of Mars, Opportunity due to land Saturday night. The team is going to be stretched, to say the least -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Miles, thank you.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com