[meteorite-list] New Curiosity 'Safe Mode' Status Expected to be Brief

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2013 16:26:07 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <201303182326.r2INQ7rx012006_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-100

New Curiosity 'Safe Mode' Status Expected to be Brief
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
March 18, 2013

Mars Science Laboratory Mission Status Report

PASADENA, Calif. - NASA's Mars rover Curiosity is expected to resume
science investigations in a few days, as engineers quickly diagnosed a
software issue that prompted the rover to put itself into a
precautionary standby status over the weekend.

Curiosity initiated this automated fault-protection action, entering
"safe mode" at about 8 p.m. PDT (11 p.m. EDT) on March 16, while
operating on the B-side computer, one of its two main computers that are
redundant to each other. It did not switch to the A-side computer, which
was restored last week and is available as a back-up if needed. The
rover is stable, healthy and in communication with engineers.

The safe-mode entry was triggered when a command file failed a
size-check by the rover's protective software. Engineers diagnosed a
software bug that appended an unrelated file to the file being checked,
causing the size mismatch.

"This is a very straightforward matter to deal with," said the project
manager for Curiosity, Richard Cook of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, Calif. "We can just delete that file, which we don't need any
more, and we know how to keep this from occurring in the future."

The mission's science observations have been on hold since a memory
glitch on the A-side computer on Feb. 27, which prompted controllers to
command a swap from the A-side computer to the B-side computer. That
operator-commanded swap put Curiosity into safe mode for two days. The
rover team restored the availability of the A-side as a backup and
prepared the B-side to resume full operations.

Cautiously bringing Curiosity out of safe mode status on the B-side is
expected to take a couple of days. A four-week moratorium on sending
commands to the rover will begin April 4 due to solar system geometry of
Mars passing nearly directly behind the sun from Earth's perspective.
The moratorium is a precaution against interference by the sun
corrupting a command sent to the rover.

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory project is using Curiosity and the
rover's 10 science instruments to investigate environmental history
within Gale Crater, a location where the project has found that
conditions were long ago favorable for microbial life. JPL, a division
of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the
project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

More information about Curiosity is online at
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/msl , http://www.nasa.gov/msl and
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/ . You can follow the mission on Facebook
at: http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity and on Twitter at:
http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity .

Guy Webster 818-354-6278 Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
guy.webster at jpl.nasa.gov

2013-100
Received on Mon 18 Mar 2013 07:26:07 PM PDT