Mars Malfunction: Rover Curiosity's Computer Experiences Major Problems

There were bound to be a few hiccups with the Mars mission that sent the rover Curiosity onto the Red Planet. Now, they've made themselves known. On Wednesday, NASA announced that the rover experienced its first significant malfunction when one of its two onboard computers became corrupted and failed to turn off and enter "sleep mode."

Fortunately, it's not all bad news. The Curiosity team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory sent up commands to the rover to switch all operations from the corrupted A computer to the twin B computer. Since most spacecraft have a backup computer to step in if the primary one fails, the computer problem was easily fixed by the team--for now.

It's been nearly seven months since the rover landed on Mars, but the computer issue is the most serious one that Curiosity has experienced thus far. On other space missions, similar computer problems were caused by high-energy solar and cosmic ray strikes. Yet the rover is supposed to have protections against such high-energy disruptions. So exactly what happened?

Apparently a high-energy strike was compounded by the location of the strike, which occurred in the directory of the computer's memory. It essentially caused the computer to become stuck in an endless loop.

Currently, Curiosity is scheduled to begin operations again in about a week. Yet problems will still remain, even if the rover remains on schedule. The amount of science it can perform is limited, since the sun comes between Mars and Earth in early April, partially blocking the path for radio communications for an entire month. Although the scientists involved with the mission had planned to send back data to Earth during that period, they've now decided against it. They're concerned that any commands could be disrupted by the sun and could harm the rover computer. With rock samples and other crucial findings onboard, it's not surprising that scientists aren't taking any chances.