What happened to the Rover Telecom System on Sol 1 & 2?
Before we discuss the assessment of the rover telecommunications problems encountered on Sol 1 and Sol 2, we want to preface this FAQ by pointing out the simple nature of the telecommunications hardware in use. These are commercial ‘off-the-shelf’ radios that have been upgraded to the best of our abilities with available time and funding to meet the flight requirements. These radios have only temperature monitoring telemetry of internal hardware conditions, so it is difficult to truly understand how well they are functioning in this new environment. For that reason any conclusion of what happened on those two days, based on such meager measured data, is still somewhat speculative. Nonetheless, a best estimate of what we feel happened will be presented. Note however, that the Motorola radio modems *DID NOT* suffer a hardware failure at any time, and given the current circumstances are working as expected; nothing had to be fixed, just understood. It is unfortunate that the July 5 press
