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The Planetary Society Blog

By Emily Lakdawalla

JPL begins actively hailing Spirit -- but is trying to manage your expectations (an editorial)

Jul. 30, 2010 | 14:29 PDT | 21:29 UTC

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How's this for a heart-stopping headline?

NASA's Hibernating Mars Rover May Not Call Home

Spirit hasn't talked to Earth since March 22 -- so what new information could they have received that would make them pronounce Spirit's possible death? Is there some new analysis of the last bit of telemetry? Some new model indicating Spirit's survival was less likely than previously thought?

Click to enlarge >

Spirit at Troy
Spirit is just a tiny insect on the shoulder of Home Plate in this artist's rendition showing the rover's position where she became bogged down at "Troy." The panorama was taken by the rover on sol 743 as she descended from Husband Hill toward Home Plate. Home Plate is the plateau occupying the center of the image; the rover is in the valley to its right. Credit: NASA / JPL / Cornell / Glen Nagle

None of these. Nothing has changed since March 22, except for one thing: rather than passively listening for Spirit, we are now (as of July 26) radioing commands, actively requesting Spirit to phone home. So why the dire headline?

I can only imagine that JPL (by which I really mean NASA) is trying to manage expectations; in the end, if we do recontact Spirit, they'll be able to say "look at this miraculous thing we achieved" and if we don't, they'll be able to say, "we predicted this months ago." And they've got a lot of experience with the art of managing expectations.

Still: sheesh. I and thousands of other rover fans have been keeping our hopes alive, sitting vigil for Spirit since she went silent in March. We've marked the passage of time until the winter solstice and her darkest night; that happened on May 13, sol 2261. We calculated how many days before solstice her power failed -- 52 -- to figure the earliest possible date we could imagine her waking up -- July 4. But with her batteries severely drained, her core cold, her solar panels likely dustier now, and with her repeatedly trying to wake up to communicate and not quite getting through wakeup before draining her batteries again -- the likely scenario for her first attempts at waking from hibernation -- we all knew to wait at least until August or September, maybe even later before getting worried. It makes good sense for the mission to have waited until the end of July to begin attempts to actively contact the rover again.

For NASA to poke their heads out of the intensive care unit just now, as we're coming out of winter and just beginning to enter the "hope window" for when she could wake up, and tell us all, "By the way, remember, she might not wake up, she might be dead already!" -- well, I'll just say it's extremely irritating; as irritating as when they warned us, in May 2008, that Phoenix might not land safely.

I know Spirit might not wake up. But I'm not giving up hope, and neither are Spirit's fans, and I'm quite certain her engineers and scientists haven't given up either. I'm still waiting to hear from her. If we get to November and we still haven't heard from her, fine, we can talk about how maybe she'll never wake up, how maybe she was already dead in July. Until then, keep your pessimism to yourself, okay?

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Comments

Oh my goodness

This is heart wrenching. I am at a loss for words.

#1 - keiko - 07/30/2010 - 16:31

Thanks for this update.

I guess the answer to JPL (NASA) managing expectations is to manage expectations on our own, huh? [*Pictures of zero-sum games starts to spin in front of eyes.*]

#2 - Torbjörn Larsson, OM - 07/30/2010 - 16:45

There is a larger crowd that might cry, "Failure"

Spirit's knowledgeable fans don't need our hands held while we wait for Spirit to wake. But there is a larger crowd of Monday-morning quarterbacks who would delight in pouncing on JPL and NASA if a more optimistic tone were struck, and Spirit continued to sleep. I don't blame JPL for wanting to avoid the gotcha-style questions that might follow; news reporting is far more adversarial than it once was. It wouldn't be fair, but that doesn't make it any more pleasant.

#3 - John Thompson - 07/30/2010 - 18:59

Spirit's Already Dead Isn't It!?!

There are many members of the public who still think that Spirit died back on Sol 18 of her mission in 2004. Others think that she continued on but "didn't it get stuck?". Still others don't realise that there are two Rovers! You can have 'expectation management' but you have to ask that when the vast majority of the public either don't know what's happening with the Rovers or worse, don't care, that releases like this are either just ignored or at least, can spread a confusing message. Don't shoot the messenger though, NASA/JPL have to not only manage expectations, but also an ignorant or cynical public/media.
All that gives to us, the Rover-aware-hugging community, an important job of spreading the word (and a little hope) beyond that possible in a 'don't hype things' media release.
Come on folks, there's work to do!

#4 - Astro0 - 07/31/2010 - 03:29

Managing expectations or serving up realism?

Who is to say?

#5 - Louis Friedman - 07/31/2010 - 14:00

MER-o-phile

Thanks for the update Emily. We were told we had 90 days and received 2000++. The mission is one of the most successful in NASA/JPL history. If she sleeps we have an end of mission celebration and all the knowledge from the data that will continue to be produced in universities and laboratories throughout the world. If she awakens ... the fantastic journey continues. Spirit has already proven to be a robust system and I wouldn't count that machine out just yet. All our fingers are crossed. Either way JPL has had a incredible success - Thanks JPL!

#6 - PDP8e - 08/03/2010 - 18:57

How hard are they trying?

Hasn't there been a push to wind down the rovers to pay for the MSL budget blowout? Maybe the bean counters want it to stay sleeping so that they don't have to hire scientists back ti run it.

#7 - Lab Lemming - 08/12/2010 - 21:13

Are you seriously suggesting that the people at JPL who are working on the rover missions are not trying all that hard to reach Spirit? On their behalf, I'm insulted.

#8 - Emily - 08/13/2010 - 16:08


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