What did I say a few days ago about my computer and how it is so much like the US Mars rover "Spirit" and "Opportunity"?

Spirit had been crippled for the past two weeks because its flash memory system — a setup similar to that used on digital cameras here on Earth — couldn't handle the size and number of files that were being stored onboard. After diagnosing the problem, engineers had to reboot the system remotely, and mission manager Jennifer Trosper said the rover now appears to be operating normally.

"I think I can say this morning with as much certainty as we can say anything here that our patient is healed — and we're very excited about that," Trosper told reporters at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. She also reported that Spirit communicated successfully with Europe's Mars Express orbiter, strengthening an "international, interplanetary communication network."

Reviewing Spirit's past failings, flight software architect Glenn Reeves said the memory glitch was a "very serious problem" that was worsened when "we managed to corrupt this file system." He said the memory management issue was not caught during the pre-launch testing process, but a review of the test data turned up hints that storing too many files might create a problem.