I've been wondering exactly what happened to the Mars Spirit rover's computer when it crashed on Mars (the computer that is, not the rover). Now I know. Cool read (especially for geeks), and if you think about how they fixed it - and how far away that thing is... I'd have killed to have seen the pocket protectors flying out of the mister-random-computer-troubleshooter-guy's shirt just as he realized what the problem was and as he flew down the hall to tell his fellow scientists.

Realizing you can fix a radiation-hardened R6000 CPU from Lockheed-Martin Federal Systems with 120 Mbytes of RAM and 256 Mbytes of flash, mounted in a 6U VME chassis, with custom cards that interface to systems on the rover, running Wind River Systems' Vx-Works version 5.3.1 operating system, used with its flash file system extension? And all from 35 million miles away?

Priceless.