10 Years In, Mars Rover Opportunity Suffers From Flash Memory Degradation

astroengine writes Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has been exploring the Martian surface for over a decade — that's an amazing ten years longer than the 3-month primary mission it began in January 2004. But with its great successes, inevitable age-related issues have surfaced and mission engineers are being challenged by an increasingly troubling bout of "amnesia" triggered by the rover's flash memory. "The problems started off fairly benign, but now they've become more serious — much like an illness, the symptoms were mild, but now with the progression of time things have become more serious," Mars Exploration Rover Project Manager John Callas, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., told Discovery News.

Comments

Re:Why are we still fighting with this?

[JoshuaZ]

These rovers were designed to last 90 days. The most broad plans extended to about a year if they were lucky. So no plans were made for every thing that could go wrong 5 to 10 years down the road.

Re:Memory Bristles

[electrosoccertux]

guys, that's not how the Burma Shave meme works.