Mars Curiosity rover bounces back from software glitch

This self-portrait, composed of more than 50 images taken by Curiosity's MAHLI camera on Feb. 3 shows the rover at the John Klein drill site. A drill hole is visible at bottom left.


The car-sized Curiosity rover went into safe mode on Thursday, a few hours after receiving a software update from its handlers on Earth. Mission engineers identified and fixed the problem, allowing Curiosity to resume normal operations on Sunday, NASA officials said.


Curiosity began heading toward the towering Mount Sharp in early July and has covered about one-third of the 5.3-mile-long (8.6-kilometer-long) trek.


"The team was able to replicate the problem on ground test beds the following day," NASA officials wrote in a mission update Tuesday. "Commands recovering the spacecraft were uplinked to the spacecraft early Sunday morning."

Curiosity has been exploring Mars' 96-mile-wide (154 km) Gale Crater since August 2012, when it aced a daring and unprecedented landing that saw the rover lowered to the Red Planet's surface by a rocket-powered sky crane.


The mission is far from over, however. Mission scientists are excited to explore the 3.4-mile-high (5.5-kilometer-high) Mount Sharp. They want Curiosity to climb up through the mountain's foothills, reading the history of Mars' changing environmental conditions as it goes.
