NASA's Curiosity rover has resumed full operations after software scare

NASA's Curiosity rover has resumed full operations, the space agency confirmed today, after the plucky Mars resident was forced into a standby mode earlier this month. NASA put the rover into safe mode as a precaution after detecting an error in its systems on July 2nd, but brought it out of temporary hibernation a week later, on July 9th. The decision marked the fourth time Curiosity has been put in safe mode, with all previous scares taking place in 2013.

The agency has determined that the most likely cause of that error was a software mismatch in Curiosity's image transfer systems, a glitch that could have caused problems when the rover wrote files from its cameras to its main computer. Luckily, the system is non-essential — NASA...