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HiRISE back on track after week-long system fault

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HiRISE, the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory's High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, was expected to resume sending back pictures of Mars by this morning, roughly a week after automatically shutting down due to an unknown system fault in the NASA orbiter.

HiRISE and the other instruments aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter went into "safe mode" last week when a self-diagnostic system failed to detect a signal, said Jim Erickson, orbiter project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

The JPL manages the orbiter, which contains several imaging devices — cameras, a subsurface radar and a spectrometer.

The orbiter is designed to go into safe mode, shutting down instruments, if the diagnostic system fails to detect an electronic "heartbeat," a regular signal indicating circuits and equipment are functioning normally, Erickson said.

After analyzing the information the orbiter sent back, Erickson said the JPL and contractor technicians decided to send up commands switching over to the orbiter's backup computer.

He said the self-diagnostic system couldn't pinpoint the failure, but that even a failure of the signal detector could shut down the system.

He said commands to and data from the orbiter and its onboard instruments are connected to the JPL via Deep Space Network stations in California, Spain and Australia.