Memory rover Opportunity Format

Opportunity - if not rekorsdmen for extraterrestrial Mileage (as far as can be judged, the primacy in this matter holds the Soviet Lunokhod, although at NASA believe otherwise), then certainly the record for staying on another planet of the solar system with maintaining performance.

As is known, the system initially expect to work within 90 days, and after landing on Mars, Opportunity has been more than 10 years. Rover systems wear out, and this is especially true in the case of flash memory rover.

fact that for the last month rover provides one failure after another, and to restore each of these failures spent a day or two. Consequently, the unit does not do anything the whole day or two. When you see such a failure, the computer system is rebooted the rover, and specialists from NASA to spend a lot of time to solve all these problems. Over the last month Opportunity reloaded 12 times already, so it is easy to calculate how much time the machine worked, and how much - idle.

According to representatives of NASA, problems arise because of attempts to write data to the outside of the cell flash memory device. Reformatting the memory, in this case - with a high degree of probability of a successful procedure, which will mark the bad sectors of memory, so that the computer system of the rover did not try to write anything such cells.

During the ten years of memory Opportunity format the first time, and from a distance of more than 200 million kilometers. However, such a procedure is already underway with twin Opportuntity, the rover Spirit, in 2009, just five years after primarseniya.



As for Opportunity, procedure reformatting the memory will be held next month. Currently, the rover is committed to Marathon Mars Valley, where many clay minerals (the latter can "tell" about the geological history of the planet, scientists hope to get more information on the availability of liquid water on the surface of the Red Planet in the past).

Via nasa

Source: habrahabr.ru/post/235343/