Mars Rover Curiosity Bounces Back from Electrical Glitch

Source : NASA/JPL/MSSS/Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity is back in action after being sidelined for nearly a week by an electrical problem.

The 1-ton Curiosity rover resumed science operations on Saturday (Nov. 23), six days after mission engineers noticed an odd voltage change and stood the robot down to investigate.

"We made a list of potential causes, and then determined which we could cross off the list, one by one," rover electrical engineer Rob Zimmerman, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a statement.

The mission team eventually determined that the likely cause of the change in voltage was an internal short in Curiosity's radioisotope thermoelectric generator, which powers the rover by converting the heat of radioactive decay to electricity.

The electrical glitch shouldn't have any lasting effects, mission team members say.

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