Search and Recovery

Description

An important supply drop crashed just short of arriving at the settlement, and based on its heat signature may still be powered on. The damage to the lander is unknown, and damaged power systems pose a risk to any humans who would go investigate.

Your task is to find the downed lander, and retrieve the storage device containing flight diagnostic logs. From the diagnostic logs you will determine the state of the power system, and from there you will remove fuel cells to make the lander safe

Rules

  1. Using the provided rough GPS coordinates of the downed lander, travel to the area and then find the main body of the lander.
  2. Use the lander’s external control panel to power down the command and control computer. The lander interface will consist of:
    1. Indicators and buttons
    2. Fuel cell array
    3. Diagnostic storage unit
  3. Remove the diagnostic storage from the lander.
    1. The diagnostic storage will be a standard USB stick (approximately 7 mm x 14 mm x 30mm) and will be coloured orange.
    2. The diagnostic storage will be NTFS formatted, with a single file “lander.log” containing diagnostic information.
    3. The file will be ASCII formatted, oldest events first, most recent events last, one event per line, less than 4GB in size.
    4. Event logs related to power cells will be formatted:
      1. [ISO 8601 Timestamp] [Severity] Cell [Number] Diagnostic [OK/FAIL] [message]
      2. 2023-12-12T23:45:06.3743Z WARN Cell 2 Diagnostic FAIL Short Detected.
  4. The diagnostic storage will contain a description of which fuel cells safely powered down, and which are malfunctioning.
    1. You may connect the diagnostic storage to a USB port on your rover.
    2. There will also be a USB port available near the task starting point where you may plug in the diagnostic storage to gain access to the log.
    3. The diagnostic storage may be plugged into the USB port available near the task starting area by hand by forfeiting the points that could be gained from plugging it in with the rover. The diagnostic storage must still be returned to the task starting area by the rover.
  5. Remove the malfunctioning fuel cells from the lander, ensuring that the installed cells are always part of a balanced configuration.
    1. The user manual for the lander can be found here.
  6. Deposit the malfunctioning fuel cells a minimum distance of 20 meters from the lander so that human crew can begin recovery of the lander.

Judge’s Commentary

  1. This year search and recovery will happen during the daytime, and there will be no astronaut to rescue.
  2. You will have to use the documentation about safe balanced configurations to determine in which order to remove the fuel cells.