The rock sample collection system of NASA’s Perseverance rover was blocked by some pebble-sized material. The Perseverance Mars rover successfully cored and extracted a sample (Sol 306) from a Martian rock on Wednesday, December 29. According to the data downloaded after sampling, the team of scientists coring of the rock called Issole is going well.
The Mars rover did exactly what it was supposed to do: it stopped the caching process and dialed home for instructions. When the rover encountered abnormal resistance while loading the sample, the rover stopped. As the rover team explained in a tweet on Friday, the debris prevented the rover’s robotic arm from properly handing over tubes full of samples for sealing and storage.
Perseverance is the first rover on Mars to attempt to collect material in a sealed tube. This is an important aspect of a mission that is also looking for evidence of ancient microbial life on Mars. NASA intends to launch an ambitious expedition in the future to collect samples and send them back to Earth for analysis. By pulling out the drill and tubing, the rover team let the machine backtrack. It took some pictures along the way to help diagnose the problem.
The pebbles are thought to have fallen from the sample container, according to NASA. While debris is a challenge, there’s no need to worry just yet. According to Louise Jandura, the designers of the drill carousel have addressed this possibility, but it took time to come up with a solution that would allow the cobblestones to leave in a controlled and orderly fashion. NASA has proven to be resourceful when it comes to dealing with the red planet’s outbursts. The Perseverance team intends to take this issue slowly to ensure that the sampling mechanism is clear and ready for future work.
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