The Mars Opportunity rover is over 125 million miles away, but that won't stop NASA from reformatting its flash memory, which is failing due to multiple resets.
These resets are happening more frequently, and they're preventing the rover from doing its job because Opportunity takes up to several days for recovery from these incidents. In August, there were dozens of resets, so it's obviously become a serious problem. NASA believes that a complete reformat is in order.
Fortunately, this reformatting isn't serious. Flash memory is the sort of memory your phone uses for storing photos and music files. However, it can wear out if it's used over and over. Reformatting wipes the memory and figures out where the bad segments are so that they're avoided afterwards.
"Worn-out cells in the flash memory are the leading suspect in causing these resets," says John Callas, project manager of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Project at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "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."
Of course, NASA won't do anything until they've backed up any useful data from the current flash memory, a process that is now underway. They will also switch Opportunity into an operating mode that doesn't require flash memory while the reformat is taking place.
This reformat is similar to what the agency did when the Mars Spirit rover suffered from similar issues back in 2004. Although that rover is now inoperable, the reformat gave it additional life well beyond its short mission.
Most impressively, NASA will send the reformat instructions from here on Earth, which means that it will probably take several days until Opportunity is back up and running.
Opportunity launched in 2003, shortly after the Spirit rover, and reached Mars in 2004. Its initial mission was only three months, but it's still going, even after a decade on the red planet. It recently broke the record for off-world driving, having traveled 25 miles on Mars. It still gathers scientific data and reports back to Earth.
Opportunity's successful missions include finding meteorites and studying the Victoria crater on the planet. Its primary mission was finding evidence that water once existed on Mars.
If the reformat is successful, Opportunity will continue driving across Mars, heading to Marathon Valley, where it will examine some interesting rocks.
