The problems with Mars rover Spirit appear to be caused by a lack of memory on the rover. Proving once again that a computer can never have too much RAM! It is amusing that such a simple factor could have caused so many problems with Spirit. But I am also guessing that the contractors who built Spirit didn’t just use off-the-shelf DDR DIMMs in Spirit.
If they did, however, then someone needs to be slapped! How could you not throw a few extra gigs in Spirit? Why go cheap on the RAM?
Now that NASA engineers know what caused the problem, they are already working to make sure Opportunity doesn’t have the same problem. Engineers are deleting unnecessary files in Opportunity’s flash memory.