NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter On the Mend After Glitch

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) put itself into a precautionary "safe mode" March 7, but the venerable spacecraft is now on the mend, agency officials say.

MRO switched over to safe mode after unexpectedly swapping from one main computer to another, NASA officials said March 11. As a result of the glitch, science operations have been suspended, and the probe is not relaying data from the space agency's two active Mars rovers back to Earth at the moment.

But things should change soon, as MRO's handlers have begun bringing the spacecraft back up to speed, officials said.

"The spacecraft is healthy, in communication and fully powered," MRO project manager Dan Johnston, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a statement. "We have stepped up the communication data rate, and we plan to have the spacecraft back to full operations within a few days." Read more...