Mars Orbiter malfunctions for fourth time

PASADENA, Calif., Aug. 27 (UPI) -- NASA says its Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has put itself into safe mode for the fourth time this year, but is maintaining communications.

Safe mode was activated Wednesday morning, meaning the spacecraft has limited activities pending further instructions from ground controllers, the space agency said.

"Engineers have begun the process of diagnosing the problem prior to restoring the orbiter to normal science operations -- a process expected to take several days," NASA said in a statement. "They will watch for engineering data from the spacecraft that might aid in identifying the cause of event and possibly of previous ones. The orbiter spontaneously rebooted its computer Wednesday, as it did in February and June, but did not switch to a redundant computer, as it did in early August."

The engineers, after the three previous anomalies, programmed the spacecraft to frequently record engineering data onto non-volatile memory. That, said NASA, could give an improved record of spacecraft events leading up to the reboot.

"We hope to gain a better understanding of what is triggering these events and then have the spacecraft safely resume its study of Mars by next week," said Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project Manager Jim Erickson of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The space agency said the spacecraft, which reached Mars in 2006, has returned more data than all current and past Mars missions combined.