NASA's Curiosity Rover in Standby Following Computer Glitch

After accomplishing one of its main mission goals – find evidences of life in Mars –NASA’s Curiosity rover has gone into safe mode over the weekend due to a computer glitch, the mission chief scientist, John Grotzinger, said Monday.

The scientists gave no more details about the glitch other than it was caused by a file error. In safe mode means that activities are in standby but the rover remains in contact with Earth.

This is not the first time the mission has been put in standby. Earlier this month a problem with the computer memory again caused the mission to be sidelined.

Despite this and other setbacks, the mission has been a successful one. Rolling on its seventh month, the mission has already accomplished its main goal and settled almost definitely a longstanding scientific debate.

Curiosity's chief task when it landed last August was to determine if Mars could have ever hosted microbial life. And, on last Tuesday scientists announced that rover's observations show that Mars was indeed habitable long ago, when the planet was warmer and wetter.

The rover also discovered an ancient streambed where water flowed for thousands of years at a time. Nevermind that the robot did all of this while putting only about a third of a mile on its odometer.

Speaking during a public lecture Tuesday at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, Grotzinger said: "The mission has accomplished its goals seven months into a two-year mission."

This was just hours after the Curiosity team announced its latest discovery.

During his talk, Grotzinger outlined some of the mission's highlights to a crowd of children and adults.

"[Curiosity] is built on the tradition of previous rovers," Grotzinger said as he reviewed the 10 different science instruments on the traveling laboratory.

The distance to Mars means that NASA engineers can't control the rover in real time. It takes 14 minutes for signals to travel from Earth to the Curiosity rover, which means that the robot's team must plan all maneuvers in advance.

NASA hopes to resume the mission this week when the new problem is solved.