Engineers at the jet propulsion Laboratory (JPL) of NASA, manages the space mission Curiosity Rover, was transferred all the control electronics of the Rover on the second-Board computer, informs the official website of NASA. The second computer will allow you to get a full diagnosis of the Martian Autonomous systems lab and correct all the mistakes that led to the impossibility of maintaining the scientific and other important technical information starting September 15.
Like many other spacecraft NASA Mars Rover “Curiosity” is equipped with two onboard computers (Side-A and Side-B). In this case, if one of the computers will have any serious problems, the control apparatus can be transferred to the second. After considering all alternatives, JPL engineers decided that the most correct way is to switch control of the Rover from the computer Side B on Side A, which was originally used since the landing of “Curiosity” on the Red planet.
The Rover continues to send back a limited amount of engineering data that is stored in short-term memory block via Orbiter relay. Through it receives commands from Earth. At the same time, an issue which does not allow to store the scientific data on the hard drive, not even allows you to record data about the actions of the Rover, which are required by the engineers for diagnostics.
About 5 years ago, 200 Sol (Martian day) computer Side A Rover also faced with hardware and software problems that led to rapid power consumption of its batteries. At that time, the Rover decided to transfer to the computer management Side B. Use another computer also made it possible to diagnose and isolate the part of the computer Side A, which results in leakage of energy. Currently, the website of NASA, the computer Side A is operational and allows to continue the scientific mission of the Rover.
“At this point, we are confident that we will be able to return to full activity level, but as soon as that happens, we can not say yet. Today, the Rover runs on A computer Side, but we may need some time in order to understand the root cause of computer problems Side B, and then design a solution to a related memory leak”, — says the curator of the project “Curiosity” from JPL’s Steven Lee.
“All last week we were checking the computer Side A and prepared for the machine to switch. Further full extension works based on the computer Side in A case of such necessity is indeed possible, but we plan to return the control electronics to the computer Side B as soon as I figure out the problem.”
To discuss the problems of “Curiosity” in our Telegram chat.
The Rover “Curiosity” has replaced “brains”
Nikolai Khizhnyak