Curiosity Rover Suffers Software Glitch On Mars

[Buster's Uncle]

Curiosity Rover Suffers Software Glitch On Mars
SPACE.com
By Mike Wall, Senior Writer  6 hours ago



This self-portrait, composed of more than 50 images taken by Curiosity's MAHLI camera on Feb. 3, 2013



NASA's Mars rover Curiosity rebooted its software after an unexpected glitch late last week, but the six-wheeled robot is now doing fine on the surface of the Red Planet, NASA officials say.

The reboot — also known as a "warm reset" — occurred on Thursday (Nov. 7), less than five hours after Curiosity's handlers had uploaded new flight software to the 1-ton rover. It was the first time Curiosity had experienced such a fault-related reboot since landing on Mars in August 2012, officials said.

"Telemetry later downlinked from the rover indicates the warm reset was performed as would be expected in response to an unanticipated event," Curiosity project manager Jim Erickson, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a statement.

Warm resets are triggered when a spacecraft's flight software identifies a problem with one of its operations. While mission team members are still working to figure out what exactly happened, the glitch does not appear to pose any serious problems.

"So, that happened. Had a warm reset yestersol. I'm healthy. Spending the weekend awaiting new instructions," NASA officials said Friday (Nov. via Curiosity's official Twitter feed, @MarsCuriosity. (A "sol" is one Martian day, which is about 40 minutes longer than a day here on Earth.)

The 1-ton Curiosity rover touched down inside Mars' huge Gale Crater on Aug. 5, 2012, kicking off a planned two-year surface mission to determine if the Red Planet has ever been capable of supporting microbial life. The robot has already achieved that goal, finding that an area near its landing site called Yellowknife Bay was indeed habitable billions of years ago.

Curiosity is now on its way to the towering Mount Sharp, which rises 3.4 miles (5.5 km) into the Martian sky from Gale Crater's center. Mission scientists want the rover to climb up through Mount Sharp's foothills, reading the history of Mars' changing environmental conditions as it goes.

The trek from Yellowknife Bay to the base of Mount Sharp covers about 5.3 miles (8.6 km). Curiosity embarked upon this journey in early July and is about one-third of the way to the mountain, which has been its primary destination since before the rover's November 2011 launch.


http://news.yahoo.com/curiosity-rover-suffers-software-glitch-mars-123655639.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Mars Rover Curiosity Recovers from Software Glitch
SPACE.com
By Mike Wall, Senior Writer  1 hour ago



NASA's Curiosity rover has bounced back from a glitch that put the 1-ton robot into a protective "safe mode" for three days over the weekend.

The car-size Curiosity rover went into safe mode Thursday (Nov. 7), a few hours after receiving a software update from its handlers on Earth. But mission engineers have identified and fixed the problem, allowing Curiosity to resume normal operations on Sunday (Nov. 10), NASA officials said.

"We returned to normal engineering operations," Rajeev Joshi, a mission software and systems engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a statement Tuesday (Nov. 12). "We are well into planning the next several days of surface operations and expect to resume our drive to Mount Sharp this week."

Curiosity began heading toward the towering Mount Sharp in early July and has covered about one-third of the 5.3-mile-long (8.6 kilometers) trek to date, NASA officials said recently.

The recent glitch was caused by an error in Curiosity's onboard software, which resulted in an error in a catalog file, mission team members said. When the new version of Curiosity's software processed the faulty catalog file on Thursday, the rover automatically rebooted its software and went into safe mode.

"The team was able to replicate the problem on ground testbeds the following day," NASA officials wrote in a mission update Tuesday. "Commands recovering the spacecraft were uplinked to the spacecraft early Sunday morning."

Curiosity has been exploring Mars' 96-mile-wide (154 km) Gale Crater since August 2012, when it aced a daring and unprecedented landing that saw the rover lowered to the Red Planet's surface by a rocket-powered sky crane.

The mission's chief goal is to determine if Mars has ever been capable of supporting microbial life. Curiosity has already answered that question in the affirmative, finding evidence that a site called Yellowknife Bay was indeed habitable billions of years ago.

The mission is far from over, however. Mission scientists are excited to explore the 3.4-mile-high (5.5 km) Mount Sharp; they want Curiosity to climb up through the mountain's foothills, reading the history of Mars' changing environmental conditions as it goes.


http://news.yahoo.com/mars-rover-curiosity-recovers-software-glitch-234323018.html