Earthly glitches block data from Mars

The problems, unrelated to computer resets on the Mars lander that delayed communications earlier, were caused in part by the incorrect setting of a radio antenna in Madrid, said Project Manager Brian Muirhead at NASA’s jet propulsion laboratory in Pasadena. “We haven’t worked with this (Madrid) team since landing day. It took a while for everybody to get configured properly,” he said.

The antenna receives information from the Pathfinder probe, exploring the red planet’s surface since its July 4 landing.

The problem was compounded by an Earth-based computer reset and the fact that the Pathfinder team had only limited access to the global deep space network of antennas, which was also being used to receive data from the Galileo mission to Jupiter.