Curiosity Rover Switches ‘Brains’ To Deal With A Computer Hiccup
Plagued by its fair share of technical woes in the six years it has been operational on Mars, the Curiosity rover has hit yet another snag and is currently unable to transmit some of its data back to Earth.
According to CNET, the six-wheeled robot has been experiencing a minor issue with its active computer over the past few weeks. The trouble started on September 15 and is affecting the rover’s ability to store science and engineering data in long-term memory.
This means that Curiosity can only store limited information in short-term memory and is struggling to beam back the science and engineering data it needs to collect as part of its mission on Mars.
While the science data is crucial to the exploration of the Martian landscape, the engineering data is equally important, explained NASA. This information refers to the rover’s event records, a journal of all its actions on the red planet. Without it, the Curiosity team won’t be able to get to the bottom of what’s causing the present technical difficulties.
No need to worry, though, as NASA engineers are on the case and have already come up with a temporary fix that will buy them enough time to figure out what the problem is.
Since the rover is equipped with two, redundant computers — to which the space agency refers as “brains” — the Curiosity team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, has commanded the robot to switch from one “brain” to the other.
Dubbed the Side-A and Side-B computer, Curiosity’s redundant systems are a common practice with many NASA spacecraft and are there to ensure the rover remains operational even if one of its “brains” experiences a glitch.
“Just switched to my Side-A computer so the team can diagnose a tech issue with the B side. (I carry two computers for situations like this.) Redundant systems: don’t leave Earth without them,” the Curiosity team tweeted earlier today.
Just switched to my Side-A computer so the team can diagnose a tech issue with the B side. (I carry two computers for situations like this.) Redundant systems: don’t leave Earth without them. https://t.co/e2jHXkNHXN pic.twitter.com/LMeBMJ54mU
— Curiosity Rover (@MarsCuriosity) October 3, 2018
As NASA pointed out, Side-A was the computer originally used by Curiosity when the rover first landed on Mars on August 6, 2012. However, Side-A ran into some hardware and software issues on Sol 200 of the mission (February 23, 2013), as JPL reported at the time, so the robot switched to Side-B in order to keep using its memory to save recorded data.
Since then, the affected part of Side-A’s memory has long been fixed and the computer is now ready to take over and support the mission until NASA engineers can repair Side-B.
“We spent the last week checking out Side-A and preparing it for the swap,” said Steven Lee, Curiosity’s deputy project manager at JPL.
Even though the engineers are not sure how soon the rover will be able to resume full operations, the “brain” swap will undoubtedly allow Curiosity to keep storing both science data and event records in long-term memory, thereby giving the team the needed tools to diagnose the problem.
“We are operating on Side-A starting today, but it could take us time to fully understand the root cause of the issue and devise workarounds for the memory on Side-B,” said Lee.
Once the issue is fixed, the team plans to have Curiosity switch back to its Side-B computer, as this particular “brain” is endowed with a bigger memory.
