NASA Puts Curiosity on Standby after Solar Flare

On March 5, NASA put Curiosity rover on standby mode after the sun unleashed a medium strength flare in the direction of Mars.

Curiosity, which was designed to withstand the harsh Martian weather conditions, including solar outbursts, was put on standby as a precaution since the rover has just recovered from last week's computer glitch. This is the second recent shutdown for Curiosity. On March 2, it was kept on a safe mode as the A-side system had faced a problem.

The rover's mission on the Red Planet has been flawless until Feb. 27, when it failed to return to Earh the recorded data and didn't get into its daily sleep mode.

On Tuesday, the scientists observed a huge solar storm erupting from the sun and heading in the direction of Mars. A Tweet was posted March 6: "Storm's a-comin'! There's a solar storm heading for Mars. I'm going back to sleep to weather it out."

Such hiccups put Curiosity's mission on hold, indicating it will take longer for the rover to return to analyze the sample of gray soil it had collected from the recent drill on the Martian rock known as "John Klein". The drilling into the Martian rock target took place Feb. 8.

While Curiosity takes a break, the flare that was accompanied by a coronal mass ejection did not affect the agency's other robotic Mars explorers such as Opportunity rover and the two orbiting satellites. They are operating normally, reports The Associated Press.

Curiosity is on a two-year mission and using the 10 specialized instruments, scientists are trying to analyze whether the Gale crater supports microbial life.