Troubleshooting
We're sorry you are here. If you cannot find the answer you need below, don't hesitate to contact us.
Top tier issues
Something broke
We are not immune from glitches and software problems. Try following the Refreshing the Notebook in your web browser directions first, and then contact us if you still are having problems.
I can’t find what I’m looking for
If you’ve looked around a bit and still need help, please contact us!
Accounts and security
Trouble signing in
Your account is your full email address. When you are signing in, a green indicator bar on the left side of the Email address box confirms your account is valid. Your browser may fill in your email address for you in a way that we do not notice, in which case the indicator bar will be gray until you click your mouse in the email box.
Your email address is not case-sensitive, but your password is. You may by mistyping your password, or perhaps your caps lock button is accidentally toggled. If your account is locked because of too many errant attempts, contact us to have your account unlocked.
Password reset
Enter your email address and click the “Forgot password” button at the bottom of the Notebook sign in screen. If the button is disabled, that means you don’t have an account with us. Simply click on the “Create account” tab at the top of the sign in form to get started!
Anonymous access
You can stay anonymous, no problem! If you are being asked to sign in, click on the “Anonymous” tab at the top of the sign in form and go from there.
Personal information and usage tracking
Your security is important to us. We use your email address to verify it is you and to present you with your history, bookmarks, image annotations, and such. We do not share your email address. We cannot look up your password, but we can help you reset it if needed. We don't have any means of interacting with your computer (running programs or reading data). Besides, we really don't have the time.
We do keep track of web pages visited by users, mainly for troubleshooting. We also provide to NASA HQ and to active mission science teams a summary table to the types of data downloaded. If you provide us with other personally identifiable information, such as an address or phone number, in the course of email or other communications, we may retain that information in our logs. And if you’ve read this far, you sound like a person who might be interested in our Privacy policy.
Performance/network Issues and error messages
Refreshing the Notebook in your web browser
You may need to refresh the Notebook in your web browser in a couple of instances:
Case 1
You left your browser open but went offline, for example, you put your computer to sleep or disconnected the network for a while. As a result, parts of the Notebook that automatically update (user history is one) lose track of the server. If the outage is long enough, your sign in credentials expire and the Notebook no longer knows it is you.
The easiest solution is to reload your browser window and follow the “sign in” link if your are prompted.
Case 2
The Notebook application has been updated, but some of the old code is still running in your browser. When this happens, the Notebook may perform oddly if at all. What happens is that your web browser has been trying to save resources and only downloading Notebook software that is hasn’t already stored in its cache. We try to tell your browser about updates that should be downloaded, but that doesn't always work.
Try these methods to refresh your browser:
- “Force reload” the Notebook in your browser (often Ctrl+F5 on Windows and Shift+Command+R on a Mac).
- Load the Notebook in a new, private browser window.
- Clear the cache on your browser and reload the Notebook.
As always, contact us if you still are experiencing a problem.
Nothing happens when I click
Either your computer is offline, or you don’t have the latest code in your browser. If the former is not the issue, please see Refreshing the Notebook in your web browser above.
Slow loading times
We don’t like to wait around, either. You certainly will notice a slowdown if your computer is low on resources, especially memory. You can free up memory by reducing the number of windows open at the same time. The activity plan timeline view can use significant resources on your computer, for example.
On the other hand, a few parts of the Notebook can be slow to load, despite our better efforts:
- Data products: product groups and derived product listings when these are large
- Targets: list of images containing a given target when more than 150 such images are known
- Activity plans: multi-sol plans opened in timeline view
- Images: when plotting more than 10 target locations on an image; when resampling images with more than 10 megapixels
- User: loading the Manage history function when more than 400 items are stored in the user’s history
If you are experiencing other slowdowns in other areas, please contact us.
Broken links
The Notebook links to external sites, and sometimes these links break when we aren’t looking. Please contact us and we’ll work to get things sorted.
Display issues
You may wish for more screen space if your monitor resolution is less than 1600 x 1200 pixels. You can collapse the navigation pane by clicking on the icon to gain more space, and then click on the icon to show it again. The same is true for the Search filter pan and Image tool annotation controls.
When a Notebook session has been open for a long time, it might lose track of where windows belong in the workspace. In this case, try refreshing the Notebook in your browser.
Lost network connections / offline use
The Notebook requires an active network connection to work properly. A short break in your connection should not be disruptive. A longer outage probably will require the Notebook to be refreshed in your browser. You may also need to sign in again.
Phone app and browser compatibility
I can’t find the phone app
Well, we don’t have one. We have thought about this from time to time, and we can’t imagine what a usable and useful Notebook would look like as a phone app. If you have some ideas, contact us!
Problems specific to different browsers
As far as browser compatibility goes, the Notebook should work well in all modern browsers on Windows, Mac, and Linux computers. Internet Explorer is not a modern browser. Please do not contact us about that.
Updates and maintenance
Scheduled maintenance
Our IT infrastructure maintenance period runs from 0000 to 0600 UTC on the second Friday of the month. During this times, the Notebook may be offline or performance may be affected.
Updates
We make a lot of updates to the Notebook. Most of them are little changes, and you shouldn’t notice anything other than happier times. When we push out a bigger update, you may need to refresh the Notebook in your browser.