Mars Exporation Rover Opportunity has been exploring the red planet for more than 10 years, but NASA says the robot is experiencing memory and data loss, which they will be solved with an upcoming fix.

NASA recently described Opportunity’s problems as “persistent computer resets and ‘amnesia’ events,” and specifically identified to issues occurring when the robot tries to save data on its flash memory storage system. The robot has resorted to bypassing its flash memory, and saving data on its RAM.

After a decade of continuous use, mission engineers have identified the rover’s flash memory as the source of lost data and unexpected resets.

Usually Opportunity’s data is stored in its flash memory, so that when the rover powers down during reboots or when its not in use, the data remains stored. However, any data stored in the rover’s RAM is lost as it shuts down.

“The mission can continue without storing data to flash memory, and instead store data in volatile RAM,” said project manager John Callas at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California in a statement. “While we’re operating Opportunity in that mode, we are also working on an approach to make the flash memory usable again.”

The problem is described as age-related. Opportunity’s sister rover, Spirit, succumbed to the Marian elements in 2010 after six years of Martian exploration, and used the same memory system.

“So now we’re having these events we call ‘amnesia,’” Callas explained to Discovery News.. “Which is the rover trying to use the flash memory, but it wasn’t able to, so instead it uses the RAM… it stores telemetry data in that volatile memory, but when the rover goes to sleep and wakes up again, all [the data] is gone. So that’s why we call it amnesia – it forgets what it has done.”

In attempts to solve the problem, NASA’s team is attempting to “hack” the rover’s software so that it ignores the faulty part of its flash memory, and instead writes to the working flash memory, permanently storing the data.