] NASA declared its Spirit rover cured Friday of the
] computer problems that had stalled it on Mars for more
] than two weeks, ending a crisis that had threatened its
] half of a double mission to seek evidence the planet once
] was wetter and hospitable to life.

] Engineers deleted files from Spirit's flash memory and
] then reformatted it, ending two-and-a-half weeks of
] "crisis mode." Trosper said the long-distance repair job
] was nerve-racking "but in the end the spacecraft did
] exactly what we wanted it to do, and it performed
] perfectly and it's in great health right now."
]
] The problem was simply an accumulation of computer files
] that kept consuming the spacecraft's random-access memory
] "and eventually we ran out," said Glenn Reeves, the
] flight software architect.
]
] The computer software detected the memory shortfall as "a
] very severe error" and behaved properly in trying to
] solve the problem by resetting itself. However, each time
] the system came back up, it would detect the same severe
] error and reset, triggering a cascade of more than 130
] reboots.

I have to admit a certain amount of awe at this particular tech support job. I have enough trouble getting my own computers and servers to run, even when I'm sitting right there in front of them. The idea of doing this remotely, from millions of miles away, sending tiny bursts of signals to this little robot which is sitting on the freezing cold Martian surface all by itself, just amazes me.

Hats off to tech support!