After the Opportunity rover has been declared dead, recently it was the Curiosity Mars rover the one that gave us a good scare. The rover had a computer reset and entered safe mode, something that’s still puzzling the scientists as no apparent reason was found. The good news is that everything appears to work just fine now.
“We’re still not sure of its exact cause, and we are gathering the relevant data for analysis,” explained Steven Lee, Curiosity’s deputy project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. “The rover experienced a one-time computer reset but has operated normally ever since, which is a good sign. We’re currently working to take a snapshot of its memory to understand better what might have happened.”
Curiosity Mars rover entered safe mode but recovered, according to NASA
The Curiosity rover had a brief inactive period, but when it attempted to come back, it somehow entered safe mode. Nonetheless, we shouldn’t be too relieved just yet, especially after what happened to the Opportunity rover. Life on Mars is not simple, and the little robot already went through a lot. That is why scientists want to make sure that things will work smoothly from now on.
“In the short term, we are limiting commands to the vehicle to minimize changes to its memory,” Lee said. “We don’t want to destroy any evidence of what might have caused the computer reset. As a result, we expect science operations will be suspended for a short period of time.”
It would also be interesting to find out what triggered this computer reset. While it might have been just a simple error, there’s also a chance that there was a more serious reason why the Curiosity Mars rover entered safe mode. Scientists are still trying to determine what went wrong with the rover, and they should share their findings with us once they are done analyzing the data.
Vadim is a passionate writer on various topics but especially on stuff related to health, technology, and science. Therefore, for Great Lakes Ledger, Vadim will cover health and Sci&Tech news.