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The Curiosity rover has performed admirably on Mars for more than seven years, but there have been a few bumps along the way. After all, it was only designed to last a few years. NASA reports that Curiosity has suffered a system failure that left the robot unaware of its position and attitude on the red planet. Until it recovers, Curiosity is frozen in place. //
Mars is far enough away that we can’t directly control Curiosity in real-time — the rover gets batches of commands and then carries them out. That means it needs to have precise awareness of the state of all its joints, as well as environmental details like the location of nearby obstacles and the slope of the ground. This vital information ensures the rover doesn’t bump anything with its arm or clip large rocks as it rolls along.
Curiosity stores all this attitude data in memory, but something went wrong during operations several days ago. As the rover was carrying out its orders, it suddenly lost track of its orientation. The attitude data didn’t add up, so Curiosity froze in place to avoid damaging itself. While the rover is physically stuck in place, it’s still in communication with the team here on Earth.