JPL experts are determining what went wrong

Aug 29, 2009 08:50 GMT  ·  By

After the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) again entered safe mode recently, experts and managers at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, California, are currently working on reestablishing contact with the space probe. After the August 26th glitch, the orbiter rebooted its computer, but did not engage its backup one, as it did during its last faulty period. Now, scientists have managed to increase the level of communication with the spacecraft, which will undoubtedly help them determine the root cause of the problem faster, and get on to solving it.

According to the team, the latest reboot took place at 5:42 am Pacific Daylight Time (12:42UT) on Wednesday. Unlike the other three instances in which the safe mode initiated this year, scientists now actually have a few leads to follow in determining what the problem is.

First off, they learned that the recent glitch affected a few patches of memory that had no been affected by the other errors. Secondly, they know now that the glitch occurred while MRO was still using its B Side computer, the redundancy one, after the early August failure. Thirdly, the diminishing time interval between the errors may also help them in understanding precisely what is causing them.

Yesterday, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project Manager, Jim Erickson, said that, “The spacecraft is stable and our priority now is to carefully work our way to understanding this anomaly, with the intent of preventing recurrences.”

He added that there were no immediate threats to the security of the instrument itself. Power, temperatures and battery charge are all within normal limits or higher, so there is no danger there. While suspended in safe mode, the craft is only capable of basic operations, while other non-essential activities, such as photographing Mars, are shut down.

Launched in 2006, the MRO has been surveying the Red Planet with its six instruments ever since. However, glitches continuously occurred over the duration of the mission, with a record-setting four taking place this year alone, in February, June and August. In most of these instances, engineers are not exactly sure why the errors appeared yet.