PC World published an interview with Scott Maxwell, a software engineer for NASA, who is also one of 14 drivers of the Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity (Wiki).

I’m just a little jealous. Here’s a quote from Mr. Maxwell:

Early in the mission, we nearly lost Spirit due to a problem with its flash file system — in PC terms, it couldn’t boot normally because we’d filled up the Rover’s hard drive. (Instead of a hard drive, the Rovers use flash drives — essentially the same technology that’s used by the USB drive on your key chain — because they have no moving parts.) When we had diagnosed and fixed the problem, cleaned up the flash drive, and knew that the danger was safely past, someone wrote this on one of our white boards: “Spirit was willing, but the flash was weak.”

Interview Link

I hope I’m not the only one who laughed.