Flood Carved Rock (ESP_012270_2035) This HiRISE image is part of the Olympica Fossae in the Tharsis region of Mars, famous for being the home of four of the largest volcanoes in the solar system.
NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has fully recovered from an unexpected computer re-set last week and resumed its scientific investigation of Mars. The mission's flight-team engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, and at Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, sent commands Monday, March 2, to power up the spacecraft's science instruments. Observations by the instruments resumed Tuesday morning after confirmation of instrument health and proper temperatures. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter had rebooted its computer Monday morning, Feb. 23, and put itself temporarily into a limited-activity "safe" mode that is an automated safety response. After analysis of the situation, including ground-based tests simulating the spacecraft events, engineers took the spacecraft out of safe mode on Saturday.