The Minority Report

There is the story of the Novell NetWare server that got drywalled into a room and wasn’t rebooted for 5 years and now the Mars Odyssey makes it 5 years without a reboot.

So…….perhaps that explains the previously lost Mars missions? They were using Windows?

there are at least 12 missions to Mars that have been lostMars: All the Lost Mars Missions

NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter was successfully rebooted today, to thwart any potential future problems with memory corruption of its main systems, and with hopes of restoring use of back-up systems. Odyssey has been functioning normally, but its memory cache hadn’t been cleared for five years. The spacecraft followed commands to shut down and then restart, a strategy that engineers hoped would clear any memory flaws. The procedure also restored Odyssey’s onboard set of backup systems, called the spacecraft’s “B side,” allowing its use in the future when necessary. “For nearly two years, we have not known for certain whether the backup systems would be usable, so this successful reboot has allowed us to ascertain their health and availability for future use,” said Odyssey Project Manager Philip Varghese of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.Mars Odyssey Survives Risky Reboot | Universe Today