Mars Science Laboratory Mission rank account

Engineers have established the root reason of a computer rearrange that occur two months ago on NASA's Mars Science Laboratory and have strong-minded how to right it.

The fix involves altering how certain vacant data-holding locations, called registers, are configured in the memory management of the kind of computer chip used on the spacecraft. Billions of run on a test computer with the personalized register pattern yielded no repeat of the reset behavior. The assignment team made this software change on the spacecraft's PC last week and long-established this week that the update is winning.

Three days after launch, during use of the craft's star scanner. The cause has been recognized as a previously unknown design peculiarity in the memory organization unit of the Mars Science Laboratory computer processor. In rare set of situation unique to how this mission uses the processor, cache access errors could occur, resulting in instructions not being executed properly. This is what happen on the spacecraft.

"Good police officer work on thoughtful why the rearrange occurred has yielded a way to avert it from occurring again," said Mars Science Laboratory Deputy Project Manager Richard Cook of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "The winning resolution of this difficulty was the ending of productive teamwork by engineers at the computer producer and JPL."