Amnesiac Mars Rover Is Getting Brain Surgery From Millions of Miles Away

NASA has had some truly unfit luck lately , underscored by thecancellation of an ambitious balloon missiondue to a leak last week . Even Opportunity , the decade - old Mars rover that has storm everyone by exploring for more than a decade after its mission ended , is showing foretoken of slowing down . Now , NASA has a program to hack it .

Oppy , as NASA calls its age rover on Twitter , arrived on Mars 11 yr ago , in January of 2004 . It was only presuppose to function for a few months—90 sol , in Martian day , which are slightly prospicient than Earth days . But Oppy kept roving , surprising everyone , for more than a X after its planned lifespan .

But the ravages of age extra no one , not even 400 pound alloy automaton . This summertime , NASA softly reportedthat Oppy was suffer from what it described as “ amnesia . ” The rover ’s flash remembering is start to wear out after so much use — so entirely on its own , Oppy started get around its flash memory and carry through its datum to another case of memory , RAM , which does n’t retain information if the arrangement is powered off . That means that Oppy is saving its data , move to slumber , and then waking up without any remembering of the task it has fill in . Over Christmas , Oppy stop talking altogether — and then , lastly , responded .

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But how do you fix a golem that ’s 125 million miles out ? And using hardware that was design decades ago ? Well , Discovery Newsreports that NASA is in the process of “ hacking ” Oppy ’s software from afar . The architectural plan is to trick the rover into remember its heartbeat computer memory only has six banks instead of seven — bypassing the single break computer memory cant that ’s do Oppy to agitate over to its forgetful RAM memory .

“ It ’s like you have an get on parent , that is otherwise in good wellness – maybe they go for a slight jog every mean solar day , play tennis each twenty-four hour period – but you never know , they could have a monolithic separatrix decently in the middle of the nighttime , ” Nasa task manager John Callas toldDiscovery News . “ So we ’re always conservative that something could pass . ”

It ’s moderately astonishing that NASA can publish software on Earth and send it , via relay planet , to Mars — where an 11 - year - old political machine will meet it , implement it , and hopefully , continue on its journeying across the red planet . If it works , it ’ll be an Oman forgreat things to comethis year . [ Discovery News ]

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