NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover Gets Back To Work On Red Planet

There is some good news! NASA's Curiosity Mars rover is finally back to work and has restarted full operations. The vehicle, which is on an exploration mission in Mars, had put itself into standby mode on July 2. Following the rover's sudden stall, engineers embarked on an investigation process to find out why the vehicle behaved in such a manner. The mission experts were able to bring the Curiosity rover out of safe mode on July 9, and now it is back to its fully operational state.

The engineers from NASA have speculated that a software mismatch in one mode, pertaining to image data transferring on board, possibly led to the rover getting into safe mode. The problem was fixed by avoiding the use of the mode, which included the process of "writing images from some cameras' memories into files on the rover's main computer". In addition, other means are also available for handling and transmitting the rover's image data.

The Curiosity rover had gone into safe mode on July 2, and most of its activities were consequently stalled. Engineers on ground then started to work on finding the cause of the problem that led the rover to such a state, and how to fix it. Incidentally, this is not the first time that the Curiosity has gone into safe mode. The rover has been in a similar situation thrice before, all of which took place in 2013.

The Mars Curiosity rover had landed on the red planet's Gale Crater area in 2012, and since then the mission has successfully discovered that the planet has had fresh water lakes and rivers, as well as habitable conditions three billion years ago to support life. At the moment, the mission is helping to throw more light on how the red planet got to its present state of being a drier and less habitable place, and with the Curiosity back to work, the related exploration and investigation will resume again.