Recent reports from NASA have confirmed that the Mars rover "Opportunity" which was sent to explore the planet's surface is experience memory problems. The explorer which was has been exploring Mars for more than 10 years already was reported to have wiped its own data and keeps on automatically resetting itself.
Experts who have been working with "Opportunity" points that the problem must came from the rover's age-old hardware that might have affected its flash memory. Further reports stated that NASA has already found a way of fixing the issue, by hacking into "Opportunity's "system and bypassing the faulty part.
Project manager John Callas said that the problem comes from the rover's volatile memory, a type of memory comparable to that of personal computers RAM. Callas added that the problem might be due to the rover's hardware age. According to an official statement, every time "Opportunity" tries to save its telemetry data to the built in flash memory, it fails. What happens next is that the data was then written to the rover's RAM or volatile memory and every time the rover restarts the information is automatically wiped out.
On an interview with Discovery News, Callas describe the incident as "we're having these events we call 'amnesia' ". He added that "which is the rover trying to use the flash memory, but it wasn't able to, so instead it uses the RAM...it stores telemetry data in that volatile memory, but when the rover goes to sleep and wakes up again, all is gone. So that's why we call it amnesia - it forgets what it has done."
According to NASA, the problem is getting severe by the minute. Some instances were also reported that the rover ceases to communicate with mission control.
The "Opportunity" has been steadily collecting data on the surface of the Red Planet for more than ten years and so far it has already covered 26 miles. On the interview from Discovery New, Mr. Callas have said that the rover might "be heading towards the end of its useful life."
