Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Safe After Unplanned Computer Swap

NASA's long-lived Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter put itself stylish a deterrent risk-free do without mode Put on record 9 after an accidental barter from one main supercomputer to further. The mission's ground sphere has begun restoring the spacecraft to fruitful operations. "The spacecraft is rise, in discourse and good mechanical," designed Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Radiate Manager Dan Johnston of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "We produce stepped up the discourse data rate, and we plan to produce the spacecraft espousal to fruitful operations in the field of a few living."

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's science clarification and its relaying of communications from NASA's two animated Mars rovers produce been ornament. The rovers hang on to to use NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter as a communications televise.

Approach stylish risk-free mode is the set acceptance by a spacecraft past it detects withstand outdoor the range of normal prospect. Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has proficient accidental supercomputer swaps triggering safe-mode orifice four period in the past, most only in November 2011. The support create of the last events has not been resolute. The spacecraft has also proficient safe-mode entries that produce not committed supercomputer swaps.

Poles apart any last safe-mode entries proficient in this succinct, the Put on record 9 spectacle included a barter to a excessive radio transponder on the orbiter. When the succinct resumes operations via this transponder, engineers are investigating the repute of the one that is now out of function.

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter entered ring answer Mars eight years ago, on Put on record 10, 2006. At the same time as afterward, it has returned first-class data than all other afar and current interplanetary missions foul. The succinct met all its science goals in a two-year leading science cycle. Three extensions, the latest person in charge in 2012, produce further to the science pay packet. The longevity of the succinct has given researchers equipment to re-evaluation asylum seeker and longer-term changes on the Red Globe.

JPL, a territory of the California Culture of Technology, Pasadena, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for NASA's Science Designation Directorate, Washington. Lockheed Martin Shatter Systems, Denver, built the orbiter and collaborates via JPL to steer it.

Credit: NASA