The Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity is in need of a flash memory reformatting, while sitting on the surface of the Red Planet. Resets of the system are becoming more common, leading mission planners to plan for a reformat of the memory. A dozen resets of the spacecraft equipment were required during the month of August 2014 alone. Each of these events took one to two days to complete, and interfere with science experiments and other activities.
Flash memory aboard Opportunity is similar to digital cards used in digital cameras. Data is retained when power is shut off, but sections of the device can be damaged by repeated use.
"Worn-out cells in the flash memory are the leading suspect in causing these resets. 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," John Callas of Jet Propulsion Laboratory and project manager for the Mars Exploration Rover, said.
Re-formatting flash memory aboard Opportunity would erase data, recovering space for future investigation. The process would also identify bad sectors in the device, and quarantine the locations from future data storage.
Opportunity, along with a twin rover named Spirit, landed on the Martian surface in 2004, on missions slated to last three months. Ten years later, Opportunity is still collecting useful data from the Red Planet, while Spirit lasted six years, before finally falling silent. Before it died, that rover started to suffer from memory losses, driving mission controllers to perform a reformatting similar to the one planned for its twin.
"More recently, the incidence of Flash memory-induced resets has increased... the impact of the resets on rover science and exploration has been minimized. But the increase reset rate is compelling expedited corrective action to the Flash memory issue," NASA officials wrote in a press release.
Re-formatting is planned for early September 2014, when the spacecraft will be 125 miles away from the Earth. Mission planners will begin by downloading any useful data remaining on the device. Opportunity will then be switched over to an operating mode that does not require the use of flash memory. The data transfer rate in the communications system will be lowered, making it more reliable in case of an accidental reset during the process of re-formatting.
Spirit and Opportunity each uncovered evidence of wet conditions on the surface of Mars in Ancient times.
NASA scientists are planning to land a human crew on Mars sometime during the 2030's. A vast amount of data collected by Opportunity and Spirit are being utilized in planning for the mission to the Red Planet.