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NASA engineers will protect the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter of repeated failures.. / September 8, 2009 /

NASA engineers have started to remotely repair apparatus Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), which currently revolves around the Red Planet, said in a press release NASA. In particular, a series of activities aimed at preventing the emergence of similar problems in the future.

The researchers said they were able to detect the causes that led to a series of failures in the computer system unit. Thus problems are not disclosed. Reported only that the work on the causes and prevention of repeated failures may take several weeks. At present, the whole apparatus of scientific activity is suspended.

Only in 2009 MRO survived several serious glitches in the computer system. The first such event took place in February 2009. Then suddenly the computer apparatus went into safe mode. After analyzing data specialists of the American space agency said that the cause of failure was the impact of cosmic rays. On the elimination of the consequences of failure took several days. In addition, similar events occurred in June and late August.

The probe Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter works at Mars orbit in 2006. During this time he gave to Earth data about the Red Planet than all previous space missions combined. In particular, using high-definition cameras HiRISE, the apparatus has been received a lot of photos of the Martian landscape. Recently, NASA put it to the easy access the next portion (about 1.5 thousand) photos taken by the probe.

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