National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientists said Spirit suffered "temporary amnesia" Friday and then the rover rebooted its computer Saturday without instructions to do so. Engineers operating Spirit said they are investigating the reboot and the possibly unrelated amnesia events, in which Spirit unexpectedly failed to record data.
Spirit has had three of the amnesia events during the past 10 days, plus a similar one Jan. 25, NASA said.
The space agency said the most recent reboot put Spirit into an autonomous operations mode in which the rover keeps itself healthy. Spirit experienced no problems in that mode on Sunday.
The rover team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., planned to regain Earth control of Spirit's operations and resume diagnostic and recovery activities.
Spirit and its twin rover, Opportunity, completed their original three-month prime missions on Mars in April 2004 and have continued their scientific investigations on opposite sides of the planet.
JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, manages the Mars Exploration Rover project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate.
Copyright 2009 by United Press International.
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