The Perseverance Rover Has a Little Pebble Problem

The Perseverance rover has run right into a snag, after a Martian rock pattern extracted on December 29 didn’t switch accurately into the rover’s long-term storage. NASA is at the moment engaged on how one can take away particles from the rover’s equipment earlier than continuing with extra sampling.

Louise Jandura, chief engineer for sampling and caching at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, wrote in a NASA blog post that the difficulty occurred when the rock pattern was being moved from the tip of the robotic arm that drilled it onto the carousel that holds the pattern tubes. Sensors on Perseverance monitor resistance when the coring bit holding the pattern first is available in contact with the carousel, and this time, there was extra drag than normal.

The Perseverance group pinged the rover for extra knowledge and imagery and instructed the rover to separate the drill bit and pattern from the carousel. That separation occurred on January 6, and NASA bought knowledge on January 7.

Images from the rover confirmed a number of bits of regolith and pebbles; the group suspects that the particles are items of the cored rock that fell out throughout the drop-off course of, maintaining the drill bit from nestling neatly within the carousel.

Jandura famous that Perseverance is able to doing the pattern storage even with particles in the way in which, however because the $2.7-billion-dollar rover continues to be comparatively new on the Red Planet and has a lot extra science in retailer, the group hopes to clear the pebbles earlier than persevering with on with the mission.

The pattern got here from a rock outcrop named Issole, the place the group hopes to gather a pair of samples from the crater ground in a area known as Séítah, recognizable for its massive, difficult-to-navigate sand dunes. Séítah’s rocks are of explicit scientific curiosity, as noted in a NASA weblog from November: “[B]y studying the directions that the layers tilted, we determined that the rocks of Séítah are likely the most ancient rocks exposed in all of Jezero crater. Séítah therefore represents the beginning of the accessible geologic record and offers a once-in-a-mission opportunity to explore the full breadth of landscape evolution.”

Eventually, the rover will make it to the western fringe of the Jezero Crater, which is believed to be a dried-up river delta. Based on fossils of microbial life on Earth, the Perseverance group thinks the crater is among the greatest places to seek for indicators of historical Martian life.

Perseverance introduced 43 pattern tubes to Mars, of which seven have been crammed. The first and second tubes didn’t comprise any rock, however the remainder have been efficiently saved. By the tip of the last decade, NASA intends to convey these rock samples to Earth, the place they could possibly be analyzed for years to come back.

Of course, the rover must recover from the current sampling hurdle first. But it was named Perseverance for a purpose.

More: Perseverance Rover Images Reveal Ancient History of a Water-Soaked Martian Crater