A SLIGHT forgetfulness aside, Spirit, the ageing Mars rover, is back in good health this week after suffering a series of problems.
When Spirit鈥檚 controllers at NASA鈥檚 in Pasadena, California, contacted Spirit on 25 January, they found that it was failing to act on instructions and would not move. It had also stopped logging its movements into its 鈥渘on-volatile memory鈥�, in which data is stored when the rover is powered down.
On 27 January, the team told the rover to orientate itself by finding the sun using its on-board camera. With difficulty, Spirit tracked down the sun, but then found itself in an unexpected location. This could explain why the rover had stopped moving. Project manager John Callas says the problem lay with the rover鈥檚 accelerometers, which were out by several degrees and so made the camera point the wrong way.
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Why Spirit briefly lost its memory is a mystery, though. It could simply be a sign of age.