Video: Why Is Curiosity Looking for Organics?

This short 60-second video explains organic molecules and what they can tell us about the history of Mars. It’s also a good segue to provide an update on how the Curiosity rover is doing following the computer problems we reported earlier this week.

Word is that the rover will resume its activities tonight. This is later than originally planned, as shortly after being recovered from safe mode back into active status following a memory issue with one of its on-board computers, engineers put Curiosity into sleep mode because of a rather large solar flare that was heading to Mars.

“Storm’s a-comin’!” the rover’s Twitter account announced. “There’s a solar storm heading for Mars. I’m going back to sleep to weather it out.”

But the CME has now passed and all appears to be well with the rover. Look for raw images to resume soon!

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy has been with Universe Today since 2004, and has published over 6,000 articles on space exploration, astronomy, science and technology. She is the author of two books: "Eight Years to the Moon: the History of the Apollo Missions," (2019) which shares the stories of 60 engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make landing on the Moon possible; and "Incredible Stories from Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos" (2016) tells the stories of those who work on NASA's robotic missions to explore the Solar System and beyond. Follow Nancy on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Nancy_A and and Instagram at and https://www.instagram.com/nancyatkinson_ut/

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