In September this year, NASA's Curiosity rover experienced a problem in beaming the data stored in its memory back to Earth, but resumed limited operations in October.
Last month, the rover resumed contact with the ground team, and now it has now sent an image (below) captured using its Chemistry & Camera (ChemCam) instrument. The image was acquired on Sol 2216 (fans of The Martian will know that a Sol is one Martian day).
NASA launched the Curiosity rover in 2012, as part of its Mars Science Laboratory mission. Since its arrival on the planet, the rover has sent back images of the rocks, craters, peaks and several other features of the Red Planet.
Earlier this year, the rover sent a picture showing a panorama of the Red Planet from the top of Vera Rubin Ridge.
However, in September NASA announced that Curiosity was having some problems beaming data stored in its memory back to Earth. Although the machine was correctly sending real-time data as well as its status information, there was a major problem in the transmission of stored data.
The issue forced NASA to halt rover's scientific operations for some time. NASA scientists and engineers began an investigation to find out the possible causes of the problem and the potential fixes.
In October, NASA announced that Curiosity rover was ready to resume limited science operations.
Now, NASA's Sarah Lamm has revealed that their next goal is to use the MAHLI (Mars Hand Lens Imager) instrument on board Curiosity and capture some images of the ‘Lossiemouth' target. After that, ChemCam will have new targets known as ‘Milton Ness' (capturing images of the bedrock) and ‘Grange 2218'.
Later, Curiosity will drive for the first time in six weeks and head toward ‘Lake Orcadie,' an area in the grey Jura on Mars. The test drive will ensure that the mechanics, software and other vital parts of Curiosity are working fine.
After completing the drive, the focus will be on capturing images of ‘Aegis Post 2218' with the help of AEGIS software, which can use Curiosity's cameras to identify and shoot rocks.
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