Mars Rover Curiosity Recovers From Software Glitch

NASA's Curiosity rover has bounced back from a glitch that put the 1-ton robot into a protective "safe mode" for three days over the weekend.

The car-size Curiosity rover went into safe mode Thursday, a few hours after receiving a software update from its handlers on Earth. But mission engineers have identified and fixed the problem, allowing Curiosity to resume normal operations on Sunday, NASA officials said.

"We returned to normal engineering operations," Rajeev Joshi, a mission software and systems engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a statement Tuesday. "We are well into planning the next several days of surface operations and expect to resume our drive to Mount Sharp this week." Read more...