NASA's Curiosity Mars rover experienced an electrical problem in its robotic arm Friday, but the space agency said the issue has been identified.

According to CBS News, Curiosity is on the mend and it could continue normal operations by next week at the earliest. A short circuit triggered an automatic shut down response from the rover's drilling arm, which is responsible for sample collection.

"Diagnostic testing this week has been productive in narrowing the possible sources of the transient short circuit," Curiosity Project Manager Jim Erickson, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., said in a press release. "The most likely cause is an intermittent short in the percussion mechanism of the drill. After further analysis to confirm that diagnosis, we will be analyzing how to adjust for that in future drilling."

Erickson previously told CBS News the JPL engineering team was testing the rover for a number of potential issues.

"But it's going to be a series of things that we use to try and figure out exactly where the short is occurring, whether it's transient or permanent, all the things you need to know in order to decide what to do about it," he said. "In looking at the initial diagnostics that we are doing and what the possible root causes are, nothing shows up as a show stopper.

"We could be surprised, and that's one of the reasons we're doing more analysis and looking at all the data we're getting down. We're going to start out very gentle, so to speak, and very low risk and gradually move to where the data shows us we should be moving."