The United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration next month will reformat the flash memory of the Mars exploration rover Opportunity.

Opportunity's been undergoing computer resets with increasing frequency -- it had 12 in August alone.

Recovery from each of the resets takes one to two days, which means the rover was out of action for most of the month.

Reformatting clears the flash memory. It also helps identify bad cells and flag them to be avoided.

Prior to the reformat, NASA will download to Earth all useful data remaining in the flash memory.

It also plans to switch the rover to an operating mode that does not use flash memory. Plus, it will restructure the rover's communication sessions to use a slower data rate, which may add resilience in case the system resets during preparatory activities.

NASA last month activated a new communication table on Opportunity, ensuring practicable communications for the next few weeks.

The frequent resets caused problems with X-Band transmissions, so NASA last week sent a real-time command to convert the next several X-band passes to use the low-gain antenna.

NASA also sequenced a checksum test of the lower portion of flash to get data on the physical health of the flash memory chips in general.

The next step is to boot the rover into a mode that does not use the flash file system. That will let NASA confirm its health independently. The rover currently is power-positive with a healthy energy balance, and it is thermally stable and communicative -- both over X-Band with the Deep Space Network, and through UHF relays with the orbiters.

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NASA's Opportunity to Lose Total Recall, Gain Spotless Mind