[meteorite-list] Curiosity Rover Out of Safe Mode

[Ron Baalke]

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