Another “bug” of the computer of the Curiosity Rover forced NASA to give him a few days off

Located on the red planet, the Rover “Kyuriositi” was automatically transferred to the so-called “safe mode”, resulting in computer errors that occurred during the regular data session, held on 15 February. At the moment the link with the Autonomous research lab is working fine, the Rover will need to continue his scientific work soon, is spoken in published on the website of the American space Agency NASA statement.

In “safe mode” “Curiosity” was translated literally after a few days, when NASA officially recognized the loss on the red planet another Mars Rover, “opportunity, which battery could not power down due to dust covering its solar panels. As a result, the Agency had to announce the end of the mission, the Rover has been on Mars for almost 15 years instead of the planned 90 days. Fortunately, the problems of “Curiosity” are not as serious, according to the website of the Agency.

Safe mode “Curiosity” was taken 19 Feb. Since the device is able to transmit data more than 30 times and no errors during this process have arisen. But since the cause of the problem NASA engineers to this point, the install failed, the Rover decided to limit the activity.

“We still don’t understand what caused this failure, so collect all the necessary information for analysis. The issue of data transfer occurred only once. This is encouraging”, — said Deputy head of the project “Curiosity” Steven Lee of the jet propulsion Laboratory of NASA in California.

To prevent the risk of data loss all scientific activities of the apparatus is temporarily discontinued.

“In a nutshell, we reduced the number of commands for the Rover, minimizing changes in its memory Bank. I would not want to destroy evidence that could cause malfunction and computer restarts,” added Lee.

The Agency noted that very soon the Rover will have to come back to their usual activities. The scientific team of the Rover found 200 metres from the Autonomous lab an interesting stone and would like to spend it drilling, collecting samples for analysis.

Since landing in Gale crater the Rover moved towards the foot of mount sharp, which is the Central hill of the crater, covered by a vast thickness of eroded layers of sedimentary rocks. Now the Rover explores the region “Glen Torridon”, where the orbiters noticed signs of the presence of clay minerals.

“The research team can’t wait to start the first drilling in this area. We do not yet completely understand how important is this region in the General history of the mountains of Supra”, — said one of the scientists mission “Curiosity” Ashwin Vasavada.

“Curiosity”, not pain!

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