NASA’s Mars Lander encountered some difficulties over the weekend, related to its robotic arm.

According to Ray Arvidson, a co-investigator for the Mars Lander's robotic arm team and a professor at Washington University in St. Louis, after being instructed to move in a certain manner that would have damaged its wrist, the robotic arm identified the danger and shut itself down in order to avoid a malfunction.

"It was smart enough to know not to do that," said Arvidson, as quoted by Computerworld. "The system operated exactly as it was supposed to. That was pretty neat," he added.

NASA’s engineers worked on a new set of instructions that would turn on the robotic arm in order for it to handle new tasks. At this point, the scientists await the results, as the new codes have just been sent to the Mars Lander.

These problems lead to significant amounts of stress as the delays translate into an accelerated work process, needed in order to make sure that all the scheduled tests take place before the temperatures drop too low for Mars Lander’s equipments to function.

Last month, during one of the sample analysis, one of the ovens short-circuited, which lead to a stop for all activities in order to determine the cause and fix the problem. Apparently, the problem appeared as a result of the continuous vibrating motion needed to store the soil samples into the ovens.

NASA’s officials hope that there will be no more setbacks for the rest of the mission duration and are currently planning new soil tests.