Mars Curiosity Rover Put Into ‘Safe Mode’ After Glitch
Nasa’s Curiosity Mars rover has been put into “safe mode” after a computer glitch caused by corrupted files.
The robot, which is analysing rock samples on the Red Planet, is now running from a back-up computer.
Nasa engineers are looking into possible causes for the files on the robot’s flash memory being damaged.
The fault means the rover’s work has been put on temporary hold while the back-up computer is reconfigured so it can take full control.
“We’re still early on in the process,” said project manager Richard Cook, in an interview with space.com.
“We have probably several days, maybe a week, of activities to get everything back and reconfigured.”
The rover has been running on the back-up computer since Thursday.
“We switched computers to get to a standard state from which to begin restoring routine operations,” Mr Cook said.
On the robot’s Twitter feed, Nasa wrote: “Don’t flip out: I just flipped over to my B-side computer while the team looks into an A-side memory issue.”
The corrupted files may have been caused by stray cosmic rays.
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