A Mars Rock Appears to Be Stuck in Perseverance Rover’s Wheel

NASA’s Perseverance rover has involuntarily adopted a touring companion, within the type of a stone that’s lodged in considered one of its six aluminum wheels.

An image captured by Perseverance’s Onboard Front Left Hazard Avoidance Camera, or Hazcam for brief, exhibits the interloper sitting on the inside of a wheel. The rover should’ve kicked up the rock whereas exploring Jezero Crater, the place it’s been working because it landed on Mars in February 2021.

The image was taken on February 25, 2022, however a similar image taken 5 days later confirmed the rock nonetheless firmly in place. The stone, it could seem, is now a cussed fixture of the $2.2 billion rover. It’s not recognized when the rock managed to hop aboard, however sleuthing by C|Net reporter Amanda Kooser suggests it’s been there since at the least February 6, 2021.

The rock seems to be a beauty annoyance and never something that’s at present hindering the rover’s progress. At least we hope. I reached out to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to substantiate that the rock isn’t at present posing an issue, and can replace this text ought to I hear again.

That Perseverance’s 20.7-inch-wide (52.2-centimeter) wheels are in a position to face up to this sudden intrusion just isn’t an enormous shock. The rover was fitted with upgraded wheels to stop the wear-and-tear seen on NASA’s Curiosity rover. Each aluminum wheel is fitted with 48 cleats that enhance traction and curved titanium spokes that present bouncy assist. The upgraded wheels are additionally narrower, with a thicker and extra strong thread, as Morten Bo Madsen, a Mars 2020 mission scientist and astrophysicist on the Niels Bohr Institute, informed Gizmodo in 2020.

Perseverance is at present backtracking towards the Octavia E. Butler touchdown web site, and it’s driving longer distances than at some other time throughout the mission. Mission planners are hoping to gather extra floor samples earlier than the rover reaches Jezero’s delta, the place it’s going to use its Mastcam-Z and SuperCam devices to review its construction and mineralogy.

This isn’t Percy’s first pebble drawback: In January, particles bought into the rover’s equipment following a rock pattern extraction. Thankfully, the rover managed to dislodge these pebbles, which had been clogging its pattern cache system.