BAFFLING power cockup halts NASA's nuclear Mars tank Curiosity NASA has halted its rover Curiosity on Mars for a few days while engineers on Earth attempt to figure out what caused an electrical fault in the robot. Curiosity self-portrait at Rocknest in the Gale Crater Space selfie ... Curiosity in the Gale Crater on Mars (Credit: NASA) The space agency was quick to reassure everyone …
But I've learned from experience - if its still functioning, don't try and fix it. Even a floating bus has a lower voltage limit and fiddling about might be just enough to push it into a hard short & kill the thing off completely - which would be sad.. because once its dead its dead.
Reminds me of my old Humber Sceptre - it might have been more rust than bodywork and more filler than either - and have an interior mostly built of vynide & cardboard but it was indestructible - even Volvo estates treated it with respect; crumple zones and pedestrian safety were for other people. Had world war three happened the radioactivity would have probably improved its fuel consumption and cold starting.
"But I've learned from experience - if its still functioning, don't try and fix it."
But, *do* diagnose it. If movement of the arm, for example, in one direction or specific position is causing the issue, then they can avoid that particular movement.
"Reminds me of my old Humber Sceptre - it might have been more rust than bodywork and more filler than either - and have an interior mostly built of vynide & cardboard but it was indestructible"
Sounds like my old first car, a 1967 Chevelle. The floorboards were quite literally 2x6 boards laid over the rusted through floor.
Was a great little runabout. It'd run about a block, then you'd push it.
Later, I got a 1969 Runsony. Runs only down hill.
It was literally well over a decade before I had a car that didn't have a wire coat hanger holding up the exhaust system. The damned things outlasted the regular exhaust system hanging gear!
I face the same problem more or less daily on underwater robots. It IS a problem that needs to be fixed (for us it leads to, amongst other things, vastly increased rates of corrosion, for them a charged outer surface could attract dust or straight up stop sensors from working) but it is not a massive rush.
It is also a nightmare to track them down as the fault could be more or less anywhere and they'll have a short-detection resolution of however many sections of the vehicle they can totally isolate (not just turn power on/off but take away the ground connection too). Good luck to NASA!
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