2009-01-29

Party for One

On Monday, the Martian rover Spirit seemed to experience "amnesia", according to mission specialists. In essence, it didn't obey commands sent to it and didn't log anything it did (or didn't do) for the day. They suspect its memory module may have been hit by a cosmic ray.

I'd like to offer an alternative theory: Monday was the 1800th Martian day for Spirit to be on Mars. It's original mission was for 90 Sols (about 90 Martian says), so Monday was the 20th anniversary of that original mission - at least in Mars terms.

Maybe Spirit just decided to throw a little party, get drunk on some whizzing electrons, and had a hangover the next day.

Regardless, I'm tipping up my own drink to both the little guys running around out there: here's to amazement at human achievement (with or without the cosmic rays).

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