Bit Rot Amnesia

By Mike Deliman

Spirit Rover has been having a number of problems recently, anomalous behaviors, losing contact with Earth, even forgetting commands.  Amnesia has been one of the larger concerns.

At the heart of this issue is a bank of flash memory.  Flash pretty much works by saturating cells to "1"s, then writing the cells that need to be 0's.  "quantum wells" hold the charge for later recall.  Since this is all done with minute electrical charges, one would have to wonder how long it could last.

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