WASHINGTON, March 5 (Xinhua) -- Mars rover Curiosity has transitioned from precautionary "safe mode" to active status on the path of recovery from a memory glitch last week, U.S. space agency NASA announced.
Resumption of full operations is anticipated by next week, NASA said Tuesday in a statement.
Controllers switched the rover to a redundant onboard computer, the rover's "B-side" computer, on Feb. 28 when the "A-side" computer that the rover had been using demonstrated symptoms of a corrupted memory location. The intentional side swap put the rover, as anticipated, into minimal-activity safe mode. Curiosity exited safe mode on Saturday and resumed using its high-gain antenna on Sunday.
"We are making good progress in the recovery," said Mars Science Laboratory Project Manager Richard Cook, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The cause for the A-side's memory symptoms observed last week remains to be determined, the statement said.
Curiosity, loaded with the most-sophisticated instruments ever used to explore another world, touched down on the Red Planet on Aug. 6 last year. It will use its 10 instruments to investigate whether conditions have been favorable for microbial life and for preserving clues in the rocks about possible past life.
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