Los Angeles ? The Phoenix lander stopped digging soil near Mars’ north pole Wednesday as engineers on Earth worked to fix a glitch that caused the loss of a day’s worth of photos.

The problem was discovered late Tuesday after the spacecraft dug a trench inside a polygon-shaped surface feature that was likely caused by seasonal expansion and shrinking of ice.

The lander beamed back pictures of the trench, but an overload of data prevented it from saving images of the landscape and atmosphere in its flash memory.

Scientists said the lost data wasn’t crucial.