PASADENA, Calif. A communiqu released late afternoon Wednesday from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has indicated an unresolved issue with the status of the Spirit Mars rover.
According to a JPL statement, ground controllers were able to send commands to the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit early Wednesday and received a simple signal acknowledging that the rover heard them.
However, ground controllers here did not receive expected scientific and engineering data from Spirit during scheduled communication passes during the rest of that martian day.
Project managers have not yet determined the cause, but similar events occurred several times during the Mars Pathfinder mission, stated a JPL press release.
The team is examining a number of different scenarios, some of which would be resolved when the rover wakes up after powering down at the end of the martian day (around midday Pacific time Wednesday).
The next chance to hear from the vehicle is when the rover may attempt to communicate with NASAs Mars Global Surveyor orbiter at about 8:30 p.m. Pacific time tonight.
A second communication opportunity may occur about two hours later during a relay pass via the Mars Odyssey orbiter, another NASA spacecraft now circling Mars.
If necessary, the flight team will take additional recovery steps early Thursday morning -- the morning of the 19th day on Mars that Spirit has been operating. -- when the rover wakes up and can communicate directly with Earth through its high gain antenna.
Earlier today, Spirit ground controllers had reported that an uplink of commands from JPLs Deep Space Network station in Canberra, Australia had been thwarted due to heavy thunderstorms at that antenna site.
That communication session included commands to Spirit to begin using for the first time its Rock Abrasion Tool, a grinder to begin work on a select rock within reach of the robot in Gusev Crater.
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