Storm over Canberra steals Mars rover's thunder

There has been a lot of reporting on how the Mars Rover is having communications problems. The cause may be as simple as weather. From the Australian newspaper The Age comes the story of a thunderstorm and a tracking station. bq. A thunderstorm near Canberra has upset the schedule for NASA's Mars rover Spirit, disrupting communications at the Tidbinbilla tracking station. bq. The ACT's wild Wednesday weather was reported around the world yesterday as NASA was forced to give its six-wheeled explorer a rest on its 18th day on the red planet. bq. Tidbinbilla is one of three stations in NASA's Deep Space Network. The others are in Spain and California. The stations are spaced so that constant communication with spacecraft is maintained as Earth rotates. bq. It was Tidbinbilla's turn to talk to the rover on Wednesday from 9.15pm to 9.45pm, when NASA was sending its daily instructions. The storm weakened the signal, which takes nearly 10 minutes to travel the 170 million kilometres to Mars. bq. "There was lightning, there was rain and thunderstorm in Canberra . . . the signal strength was not able to be received by the rover; we were not able to transmit the command to the rover," said Mars rover mission manager Jennifer Trosper. "The rover continues to run on yesterday's master sequence. So not a lot of science was done today." There is a wonderful movie which came out in 2000 called The Dish. It is the story of one of these radio telescopes and its use during the Apollo Moon Landing. Delightful film - hard do describe - IMDB puts it as a 'regional comedy' but it has a lot of science in there too. Worth renting if you are looking for something fun.