[meteorite-list] Curiosity Rover Out of Safe Mode

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2013 16:15:59 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID: <201311130015.rAD0Fxpx028739_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-330

Curiosity Out of Safe Mode
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
November 12, 2013

Mars Science Laboratory Mission Status Report

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Project received confirmation from Mars
Sunday (Nov. 10) that the Curiosity rover has successfully transitioned
back into nominal surface operations mode. Curiosity had been in safe
mode since Nov. 7, when an unexpected software reboot (also known as a
warm reset) occurred during a communications pass with the Mars Reconnaissance
Orbiter. Mission science planning will resume tomorrow, and Curiosity
science operations will recommence on Thursday.

"We returned to normal engineering operations," said Rajeev Joshi, a software
and systems engineer for the Curiosity mission at NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "We are well into planning the next several
days of surface operations and expect to resume our drive to Mount Sharp
this week."

After analyzing the data returned by the spacecraft on Thursday evening,
Nov. 7 (Pacific Time), the Curiosity operations team was able to determine
the root cause. An error in existing onboard software resulted in an error
in a catalog file. This caused an unexpected reset when the catalog was
processed by a new version of flight software which had been installed
on Thursday. The team was able to replicate the problem on ground testbeds
the following day. Commands recovering the spacecraft were uplinked to
the spacecraft early Sunday morning.

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Project is using Curiosity to assess whether
areas inside Gale Crater ever offered a habitable environment for microbes.
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 .

DC Agle 818-393-9011
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
agle at jpl.nasa.gov

2013-330
Received on Tue 12 Nov 2013 07:15:59 PM PST