[rhino42]

I work at NASA / JPL (but I'm not part of the MSL team, or any flight software team). We learn a good bit about good flight practices though. Here's what probably happened:

Someone found the problem as a behavioral anomaly or weird status bits. It gets reviewed and escalated a few times until the important people know. For class-A missions (I think lower classes too), we have performed fault analysis on each component (and the system as a whole), so that we can match an observed behavior to the actual underlying issue through something like a flowchart. I don't know for sure, but it was probably a bit harder for a bit-flip, but I wouldn't be surprised if they had provisions for that too. However, these high-profile projects are extremely risk-adverse, so they'll review any non-standard commands heavily before transmitting them. teams (plural) probably reviewed this failure before confirming the initial conclusion.

The week was accounting for this through analysis and review process.

(my opinion is my own, and doesn't represent NASA or JPL)