After Serious Glitch, NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover Recovers

The Curiosity Mars rover of NASA, which landed on Mars back in 2012, underwent a technical problem while starting up last week. But it is able to recover thanks to the effort of the scientists on Earth. They are now working to find the problem and fix it.

In a blog post, the deputy project manager of the Curiosity at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Steven Lee, said:

After having an inactive period, the Curiosity tried to come back online, which is a process that has been done over 30 times before, a glitch occurred. This led to the triggering of a “protective safe mode.”

After being inactive for the weekend, the rover was successfully brought back online by the mission control. However, being able to recover does not mean that the Curiosity, which is exploring whether Mars could become a living environment, is safe yet. This is a critical situation for NASA, especially it happened just weeks after its Opportunity rover was dead.

Earth-based scientists are trying to reconstruct what happened forensically by downloading its memory’s snapshot. Because of this, they need to take a break from all the scientific work, which makes researchers frustrated, according to Space.com. Initially, they had been planning to bore a hole in an “intriguing rock” located around 650 feet away from the current location of the rover.

Lee continued: