Mars rover curiosity suffers from hiccups; NASA puts scientific experiments on hold



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NASA Opportunity Rover (Representational Image)
NASA Opportunity Rover (Representational Image)

New Delhi There is something wrong with NASA's Opportunity Rover on Mars, it does not transmit scientific data to the Earth. It's been over 100 days that the red planet is facing a huge dust storm, which seems to affect curiosity since September 15th.

The files stored on the hardy rover's onboard memory seem to have problems and the problem is related to its internal file systems, says NASA. As such, scientists around the world have put curiosity behind all scientific missions until technicians discover what is wrong with the rover, reports Space.com.

According to Steve Lee, JPL's Curiosity Assistant Project Manager, the problem seems to be in the rover's internal filing systems. Lee went on to explain that the ground crew is reducing it and that potential causes are being examined, but they still need to determine if the problem is hardware or software related.

Apart from this problem, the rover is doing well, the report notes. In fact, it constantly returns engineering data, which NASA qualifies as useful for diagnosing file and memory errors. This means that this error, Lee said, is not critical, unlike the computer problems that Curiosity faced only 200 days on Mars (Soils) after landing on Mars in August 2012.

Although the current memory problem is complex, the Curiosity team has several options for solving this problem.

Problems related to memory hardware can be solved for all parts of memory banks that no longer work, Lee said. If the problem is related to the software, "a patch can be designed to update the Curiosity embedded flight software …" he says, a backup computer is available, called A Side.

"During the Sol 200 anomaly," said Lee, "the rover was not responding to commands and was not sleeping to recharge his battery either."

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