Curiosity update: ‘Uplink problems’

NLB_500745233EDR_S0503076NCAM00546M_Sol 1165, November 16, 2015, update from USGS scientist Ryan Anderson: Unfortunately, our plans for the weekend were thwarted by a problem with the Deep Space Network that prevented the plans from being sent to the rover. As someone on the team pointed out in response to the issue, this just goes to show how many steps in the process have to go just right for us to be able to operate a rover on Mars, and it’s pretty impressive that these sorts of issues are as rare as they are.

Given its lack of instructions, Curiosity spent the weekend in “runout” mode. Runout mode mostly consists of environmental monitoring. Since the weekend plan was not uplinked, much of today’s plan contains repeats of what we tried to do over the weekend. [More at link above; image below shows Curiosity's recent path through Sol 1163]

PIA20162

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