Engineers have already identified a software memory problem that caused "amnesia episodes" in NASA's Opportunity Mars Rover late last year. But now, Opportunity has again been beset by this memory loss.

John Callas, project manager of Opportunity from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said his team changed how the rover utilizes its flash memory to correct these technical memory problems.

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This recurring amnesia appeared once more after only five days since reformatting the rover. To date, there's still no identifiable cause of Opportunity's memory lapses.

This technical problem, however, is believed to originate from one of the several memory banks inside Opportunity's flash memory, which is considered the rover's hard drive of sorts. The flash memory stores important data even if the rover is powered down.

Even if Opportunity is switched off to preserve its battery life during night time, the mission telemetry isn't lost but stored in the rover's memory banks.

Late last year, however, Opportunity began to "forget" some of its pivotal data. This occurrences led to random resets during the day, which slowed down the mission's progress.

To alleviate the problem, mission engineers decided to temporarily store data using a "no flash mode" where stored data was stored in the rover's volatile memory. Opportunity simultaneously transmits data back to Earth before its powers down at night. This volatile memory is similar to a desktop computer's RAM.

NASA engineers uploaded new software onto Opportunity's seventh memory bank to reformat its memory on March 20. Although no significant data was lost during this last episodic amnesia attack, Opportunity's memory problems seem far from over.

TagsAmnesia on Mars: NASA Opportunity Rover's Memory is Failing Yet Again, NASA, NASA opportunity rover, NASA amnesia opportunity rover mars, mars opportunity rover