Engineers hoped to receive data on how the spacecraft is functioning by early yesterday, when a window of communication with the rover opens, JPL director Charles Elachi said in a television interview broadcast by NASA.
"We can do a diagnostic and understand what happened, what are the corrective actions that need to be done and how do we bring it carefully and thoughtfully to its normal operation mode," Elachi said.
"There is nothing rushing us to do the fix immediately, other than people being anxious," he added.
Initially, engineers believed bad weather on Earth had caused the communications glitch. But the weather was later discounted as the source.
The rover had been scheduled yesterday to grind away a tiny area of the weathered face of a sharply angled rock dubbed Adirondack.
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