NASA s Mars rover Curiosity has been temporarily put into "safe mode," as scientists monitoring from Earth try to fix a computer glitch, the US space agency said.


Scientists switched to a backup computer Thursday so that they could troubleshoot the problem, said to be linked to a glitch in the original computer s flash memory."We switched computers to get to a standard state from which to begin restoring routine operations," said Richard Cook of NASA s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the project manager for the Mars Science Laboratory Project, which built and operates Curiosity.

A NASA statement said scientists expect to shift the powered-down computer on Curiosity back to full operation in the coming days.The $2.5 billion Curiosity mission, which is set to last at least two years, aims to study the Martian environment and to hunt for evidence of water in preparation for a possible future manned mission.