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Short Circuit Puts the Curiosity Rover's Fate in Question

Curiosity will be out of commission for several days after an electrical glitch.
​Illustration of Curiosity. Credit: NASA

​NASA has announced some worrisome news from Mars: The Curiosity rover, bearer of the most sophisticated laboratory on the planet, suffered a short circuit on February 27.

The electrical malfunction occurred while the rover was transferring rock collected from an outcrop of rock called Telegraph Peak. The Curiosity team, based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), has halted operations on the rover in response. It will remain stationary for several days as engineers investigate the glitch.

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Curiosity's drill at Telegraph Peak on Feb. 24, 2015. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

"We are running tests on the vehicle in its present configuration before we move the arm or drive," said Jim Erickson, Curiosity's project manager, in a JPL statement. "This gives us the best opportunity to determine where the short is."

Curiosity touched down in Mars's Gale Crater on August 6, 2012, and reached its target destination, Mount Sharp, in September 2014. In the ensuing months, the rover has been collecting ground samples from the the mountain's foothills, which have revealed complex organic materials, among many other interesting features.

Curiosity's robotic arm transports the samples collected by its drill into the Mars Science Laboratory for testing, a process it has completed many times before. But one of the downsides of exploring distant worlds is the lack of an on-call maintenance team. It only takes one malfunction to stall a mission, or even end it, as has been the case with Mars's growing community of defunct landers and rovers.

JPL was expertly vague about the seriousness of the Curiosity short. All the statement would concede was that "[a] transient short in some systems on the rover would have little effect on rover operations. In others, it could prompt the rover team to restrict use of a mechanism."

Depending on the severity and location of the short, this could be a costly setback for the Curiosity team. That would be a huge shame, as the roving laboratory has produced some incredible results in its years on Mars, including proof that the planet did once support conditions conducive to life.

But it's also worth remembering that JPL doesn't mess around with rover construction, and has a great track record with Martian exploration. For instance, Curiosity's powerhouse predecessors, the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, both outlived their expected mission durations by several years.

In fact, Opportunity is still roving away like a boss over a decade after it first landed in Mars's Meridiani Planum, and it had its fair share of malfunctions along the way too. So hopefully, Curiosity will recover as its forerunners have done many times before. And even in the unlikely event that the short has caused a major systems error, the rover has more than earned its keep during its two and a half years on Mars.