When Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity landed on Mars with its twin Spirit, their mission was only supposed to last three months. Spirit worked for six years, and Opportunity is still active more than 10 years later.
Now, the Mars Opportunity rover needs a memory boost. Thanks to increasing frequency of computer resets, NASA is planning on reformatting the rover’s flash memory from 125 million miles away.
The flash memory on the rover is similar to the ones in our smartphones and digital cameras—though of course packing a lot more interesting data than music playlists. Using flash memory repeatedly to collect and store data can cause individual parts, or “cells,” to become damaged. NASA will clear the memory and pinpoint the bad cells to let the rover’s software know those parts should be avoided.
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“Worn-out cells in the flash memory are the leading suspect in causing these resets,” John Callas of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and project manager for NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Project, said in a statement. “The flash reformatting is a low-risk process, as critical sequences and flight software are stored elsewhere in other non-volatile memory on the rover.”
Before rebooting Opportunity, NASA will download all useful data and place the rover in an operating mode that doesn’t use flash memory. The scientists will reset the rover at least a dozen times, and the technical work will impede the rover’s planned schedule.
Image courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech.
