Machines accumulate gunk over time and sometimes starting with a clean slate is necessary. For the first time since it landed on Mars, the Opportunity rover will soon receive a flash memory reformat.
The Opportunity rover landed on Mars in early 2004 along with the Spirit rover. The twin rovers were supposed to explore the Red Planet for just three months, but they ended up working far longer than expected. Just how long? Opportunity is still active, while Spirit lasted for six years.
Does a reformat mean the Opportunity rover is coming home?
Afraid not. Although the rover is currently around 125 million miles away from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, it is possible to do a reformat for a machine in space. The JPL just needs to make the necessary preparations to ensure the reformatting scheduled next month will go off without a hitch.
How does the JPL prepare a rover for reformatting?
First, all useful data stored within the Opportunity's flash memory will be downloaded. Afterward, the rover will be switched to an operating mode which doesn't require flash memory use and communication sessions will be programmed to utilize a slower data rate.
NASA's JPL was pushed to do a reformat on the Opportunity's flash memory because the number of resets the rover requires was starting to grow. Just in August, Opportunity needed a dozen resets, each one of which needed about a day or two for the rover to completely recover from. This takes away time Opportunity could've spent exploring Mars.
Flash memory is made up of individual cells which store data. Repeated use wears out these cells so they start malfunctioning over time. Reformatting essentially gets rid of data to give the memory a clean slate while at the same time identifying cells that have gone bad so these may be avoided the next time the cells are in 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 nonvolatile memory on the rover," explains JPL's John Callas, the project manager for the Mars Exploration Rover Project.
A division of the California Institute of Technology, the JPL is a component of the Mars Exploration Rover Project, which is in turn just one part of NASA's preparation for future human missions to Mars projected to start in 2030.
