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Trace the Curiosity rover's journey to Mars and see the pictures that the six-wheeled robot has sent back from the Red Planet.
By Mike Wall
Space.com
NASA's Curiosity rover is back in action on Mars after being sidelined by a computer glitch for the second time in three weeks.
Curiosity went into a precautionary "safe mode" on Sunday, apparently because a file slated for deletion was connected to one still in use by the rover. But the mission team has now sorted things out and returned the robot to active status, NASA officials announced Tuesday.
The car-size Curiosity rover has not resumed science operations yet, however. It's still recovering from a separate memory glitch that knocked out its main, or A-side, computer in late February. Engineers swapped Curiosity over to its backup (B-side) computer at the time, spurring the rover to go into safe mode on Feb. 28.
Curiosity bounced back on March 2, only to stand down briefly once again a few days later to wait out a Mars-bound solar eruption. [Curiosity Rover's Latest Amazing Mars Photos]
Mission engineers continue to configure and check out the B-side computer, which remains the Curiosity rover's active computer. The A-side is now available as a backup if needed, officials said.
All of this drama has delayed Curiosity's activities at a Martian site called Yellowknife Bay, which mission scientists announced last week could have supported microbial life. This discovery was based on Curiosity's study of material pulled out of a hole it drilled last month into a Yellowknife Bay rock. Further such analytical work should be possible soon, rover team members said.
"We expect to get back to sample-analysis science by the end of the week," Curiosity mission manager Jennifer Trosper, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a statement.
The rover team also wants to drill another hole in the Yellowknife Bay area to confirm and extend their previous observations. But this won't happen until May, partly because of an upcoming unfavorable planetary alignment.
Engineers won't send commands to the six-wheeled robot for most of April, because Mars and Earth will be on opposite sides of the sun during this time. "The moratorium is a precaution against interference by the sun corrupting a command sent to the rover," NASA officials wrote in a mission update.
Curiosity is the centerpiece of NASA's $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory mission. The huge robot touched down inside Mars' Gale Crater last August, kicking off a planned two-year surface mission to determine if the area ever could have supported microbial life.
While Curiosity has already achieved its main mission goal, the rover's handlers have no desire to rest on their laurels. They still plan to send Curiosity on to its main science destination — the base of 3-mile-high (5 kilometers) Mount Sharp — when it's done at Yellowknife.
Mount Sharp's foothills, which lie about 6 miles (10 kilometers) from the rover at present, show signs of long-ago exposure to liquid water. The mountain's many layers also contain a record of how Mars' environmental conditions have changed over time, and researchers want Curiosity to read these layers like a book as it climbs up Mount Sharp's slopes.
Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.
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Leave a Comment:
I'm happy to see that Curiosity got over this hump; and hoping for many years of roving!
IDK. It doesn't seem to be starting off too well. I give it 2 months.
That's how science and real life work Binkster...two steps forward, one step back, two steps foward, etc.
Yah, good thing the OS is VxWorks and not Linux -- or that puppy would be well and truly parked...
Curiosity was just taking some "time to play B-sides"...
Was it a glitch?
Or was it a worm?
There will be worms.
Can we name the next one Fido? Rover is getting old...
jokes aside... They should have made this one with a launchpad on top, with a return canister that it can send back with an actual sample inside. Much better than trying to do tests up there.
You can't just get up and leave Mars because you want to. The escape velocity of Mars is around 11,000 MPH. Mars has no launching pads nor a space craft to launch the rover back to Mars orbit and then back to Earth. The fuel that would be needed for such a liftoff and flight into orbit would be enormous. Maybe in the next 30 plus years or so this could be accomplished.
Actually I believe the Europeans in coordination with Russia are working on such a mission to be launched in the next decade. You are correct though, it'll take more than just a little rocket to reach orbital velocity and there will likely need to be an orbiter component waiting to receive the sample to then return to Earth.
It's actually better to do the tests up there because down here the problem is having to worry about cross contamination. Also if they would have sent up a return canister, you get 1 sample and it's done. Where with the rover they can move it around and get data from numerous sites on the surface of Mars.
We belong to a species that is able to place evidence of our existence beyond our planet less than a hundred years after first conquering flight. And yet some of us think our sexual adventures and culinary tastes are being monitored by angels on some kind of celestial TV channel.
We are a weird life form. Fascinating but weird.
Aren't there designated arenas for such irrelevant religious/anti-religious attacks? Oh, there's not? Ok then, carry on stirring drama on any article slightly related to science.
There... see how my sarcasm kinda didn't make you want to side with me? Clearly, using sarcasm and insulting others' beliefs is a terrific way to sway them to your way of thinking.
Mattt,
Thanks for your comments. Fascinating!
wait.....what if....what if..............WE'RE the aliens! omg omg noooooooo i'm so stoned.
one question...if life as we know it needs water, why the heck is the B-$$$$$ rover in the middle of the planet and not near the polar ice cap to begin with??? try more closer to where the phoenix landed. do we not want a good chance to find life? or is that for the next BIG funding mission....
Because it's warmer there and life would've had more of a chance to flourish in warmer climates. Biodiversity on this planet varies enormously from the equator to the poles. There's water there.... it's just not very visible on the surface at this time.... and the polar caps are in a major deep freeze 100% of the time.
So, is the A computer the left side of the brain, or right side? I just want to know if the Curiosity is right handed or left handed.
One-handed. ;-) (At least, only one-armed)
like a one-armed bandit?