Strelnikov
4th Level Red Feather
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By Adam Turner
April 1, 2004
A torrent of interplanetary spam has been found responsible for crippling the onboard computer of NASA's Spirit rover in January.
Spirit lay crippled on the Martian surface for two weeks after a glitch in its onboard spam filtering saw countless offers of pornography and cheap drugs choke its flash memory, according to NASA spokeswoman Shirley Knott.
"It would appear Russian spammers obtained Spirit's email address from a leaked internal NASA mailing list," says Knott.
"The rover's limited onboard artificial intelligence was foolish enough to apply for an shonky online marketing diploma. Soon after offers of cheap WD40 and antenna enlargements began clogging the link between Mars and NASA's Deep Space Network. Eventually, Spirit's file management software choked and sent a distress message to the central processor which kept rebooting."
Technicians solved the problem by upgrading the artificial intelligence on both Spirit and its twin Opportunity. "The rovers now have enough sense not to respond to spam or open unknown email attachments, which makes them smarter than your average person," says Knott.
The news comes too late for the British Mars probe Beagle 2, which is believed to have fallen prey to a Martian strain of the Nigerian money laundering scam.
Controllers have been unable to remotely reset the probe and expect it to keep bombarding the earth with spam for eternity, introducing itself as the brother of former Martian president Joseph Estrada and appealing for help to transfer money back to earth.
This article is from the "The Age", an Australian News Paper at http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/03/31/1080544546727.html
Strelnikov
April 1, 2004
A torrent of interplanetary spam has been found responsible for crippling the onboard computer of NASA's Spirit rover in January.
Spirit lay crippled on the Martian surface for two weeks after a glitch in its onboard spam filtering saw countless offers of pornography and cheap drugs choke its flash memory, according to NASA spokeswoman Shirley Knott.
"It would appear Russian spammers obtained Spirit's email address from a leaked internal NASA mailing list," says Knott.
"The rover's limited onboard artificial intelligence was foolish enough to apply for an shonky online marketing diploma. Soon after offers of cheap WD40 and antenna enlargements began clogging the link between Mars and NASA's Deep Space Network. Eventually, Spirit's file management software choked and sent a distress message to the central processor which kept rebooting."
Technicians solved the problem by upgrading the artificial intelligence on both Spirit and its twin Opportunity. "The rovers now have enough sense not to respond to spam or open unknown email attachments, which makes them smarter than your average person," says Knott.
The news comes too late for the British Mars probe Beagle 2, which is believed to have fallen prey to a Martian strain of the Nigerian money laundering scam.
Controllers have been unable to remotely reset the probe and expect it to keep bombarding the earth with spam for eternity, introducing itself as the brother of former Martian president Joseph Estrada and appealing for help to transfer money back to earth.
This article is from the "The Age", an Australian News Paper at http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/03/31/1080544546727.html
Strelnikov
