These pebbles interfered with the Perseverance rover’s capability to stow away a rock pattern tube.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
This story is a part of Welcome to Mars, our collection exploring the pink planet.
When Mars provides you pebbles, you give them again.
NASA’s Perseverance rover bumped into an issue with its sampling course of late final yr when some pebbles received in the best way of transferring a tube filled with rock into its inner dealing with system. That meant the rover staff needed to get artistic with clearing the blockage.
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The challenge occurred alongside the rover’s bit carousel, which passes the pattern tubes inside for processing. As a take a look at, NASA commanded the rover to rotate the carousel. It labored. The higher two pebbles have been kicked out. “This is nice information, as these small chunks of particles are believed to be the reason for the unsuccessful switch of the drill bit and pattern tube into the carousel again on Dec. 29,” deputy venture supervisor Rick Welch wrote in a mission replace on Friday.
NASA tweeted a nifty GIF exhibiting earlier than and after views of the bit carousel. You can see how the biggest pebbles are actually cleared out.
There’s nonetheless a small quantity of particles left, however it might not trigger any points for the sampling course of and people bits might fall out when the rover strikes about.
Jettisoning the pebbles was only one activity the rover wanted to perform. The staff additionally determined it might be sensible to empty any remaining rock out of the pattern tube so it might be reused for a recent pattern if wanted. This experiment took a little bit of effort because the staff tried totally different strategies of clearing the tube, together with aiming it towards the bottom. “With the tube’s open finish nonetheless pointed in the direction of the floor, we basically shook the heck out of it for 208 seconds – by way of the percussive perform on the drill,” Welch stated.
NASA Perseverance rover and Ingenuity helicopter discover the wilds of Mars
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The rover examined its handiwork and noticed some rock bits on the bottom. Follow-up photographs present the tube could be reused, probably for re-sampling the unique rock that kicked off the pebble downside.
Collecting rock samples is a key a part of Perseverance’s work. NASA is planning a future follow-up mission to assemble the samples and convey them again to Earth for examine.
The saga of the pebbles is an effective illustration of the flexibleness and creativity required for a robotic to efficiently function on Mars. The surprising can occur, like when the rover’s flying helicopter companion Ingenuity was lately grounded because of dangerous climate. With some rotations and a few shimmies, it appears to be like like Perseverance will get again to constructing its rock assortment pretty quickly.