NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover Has a Pebble-Sized Problem Obstructing Rock Sample Collection

While transferring rock sample to its storage, Perseverance’s sensor indicated an anomaly.

By Edited by Gadgets 360 Newsdesk | Updated: 8 January 2022 12:43 IST

NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover Has a Pebble-Sized Problem Obstructing Rock Sample Collection

Photo Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Pebble-sized debris can be seen in the bit carousel of NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover

Highlights

A small debris is creating problems for Perseverance's arm
The debris fell out of the storage while collecting the rock samples
NASA engineers are now trying to remove the debris

NASA's Mars rover Perseverance is in the process of collecting rock samples to send back to Earth via a future human mission to Mars. But some pebble-sized debris is creating problems for the machine. At first, things went smoothly. Perseverance successfully extracted a sample from a Martian rock, named Issole. However, while transferring the sample to its storage, the rover's sensor indicated an anomaly — a higher degree of resistance. Immediately, the rover stopped coring and called its monitoring system on Earth, asking for further instructions. The incident took place on December 29.

The Perseverance team sought more data to understand the nature of the anomaly. A week later, they found some pebble-sized debris obstructing the smooth functioning of the probe's robotic arm.

I recently captured my sixth rock core and have encountered a new challenge. Seems some pebble-sized debris is obstructing my robotic arm from handing off the tube for sealing/storage. More images and data to come. #SamplingMars takes perseverance.

Blog: https://t.co/flabIslR21 pic.twitter.com/sfaxuu0HNG
— NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover (@NASAPersevere) January 8, 2022

Louise Jandura, the chief engineer for sampling and caching at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), said in a blog post that the team is confident that these debris fell out of the storage while collecting the rock samples.

NASA engineers are now trying to remove the debris in an orderly fashion. Since this is the first time they are doing a debris removal, they want to take whatever time is necessary to do it. And they will be evaluating the latest data set over the weekend.

“This is not the first curve Mars has thrown at us — just the latest,” Jandura said.

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