The Opportunity rover he starts to forget after ten years εξερεύνησηher surfaces of Mars. Opportunity's memory appears to have worn down with use, meaning the rover may forget data that it has stored when it is turned off.
Opportunity began exploring the planet 2004, and uses two kinds of memory. Scientists call them "volatile" and "non-volatile". Non-volatile memory is something like a computer's hard drive and is used to store information that the rover should hold when it is shut down.
However, the rover is constantly losing data when it re-starts unexpectedly. The Mars Rover Opportunity Manager, NASA's John Callas, compares the problem with a disease.
"The problems started quite mildly, but now they have become much more serious - it is very much like a disease, the symptoms were mild, but now with the progress of time things have become more serious," Callas told the Discovery News.
The problems grew until Christmas the rover stopped communicating with Earth. He failed to carry out instructions given to him, although he was in contact with his controllers.
NASA scientists believe they can handle the problem. It seems that one of the seven memory banks embedded in the rover is causing problems, and they hope that if they isolate the problem, Rover will continue to function normally with the other six.
But to do this, scientists will need to write a new software and then load it and install it in Opportunity. This is expected to happen in the next two weeks.
