Mars Rover Disoriented Somewhat After Glitch:
More strangely, the Spirit had no memory of what it had done for that part of Sol 1800. The rover did not record actions, as it otherwise always does, to the part of its computer memory that retains information even when power is turned off, the so-called nonvolatile memory. "It's almost as if the rover had a bout of amnesia," said John Callas, the project manager for the rovers.
Another rover system did record that power was being drawn from the batteries for an hour and a half. "Meaning the rover is awake doing something," Dr. Callas said. But before-and-after images showed that the Spirit ended the day exactly where it started.
Suspicious?
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Conspiracy theorists in their burrows on Mars will be telling each other that strange squidgy pink men from the planet Terra have landed in an undetectable spaceship and molested Spirit with their anal probes! The fiendishly bizarre technology of the blue-green planet has been used to wipe Spirit's memory to remove traces of the anal probing, surely that proves it?
Well, it could have had 18 hours of static recorded.
It seems even our robots develop Alzheimer's! Unless, of course, the Martians are taking an interest in it...
Even Nixon only erased 18 minutes. Martians are more evil than Nixon! Panic!