The Mars Perseverance rover’s sample collection has run into a hitch. NASA reports the rover stopped caching samples after debris incompletely blocked the bit carousel (the device that stores drill bits and passes sample tubes for internal processing). The rover encountered the anomaly on December 29th, but the charge platoon had to stay until January 6th to shoot a command to prize the drill bit, undock the robot arm from the carousel and take images to corroborate what happed.
The obstacles are believed to be pebbles that fell out of the sample tube when dropping off the coring bit, precluding that bit from sitting neatly in the carousel. The storehouse is pivotal for NASA’s plans to ultimately return the samples to Earth This is not the end to sample gathering. NASA/ JPL’s principal slice mastermind, Louise Jandura, noted the carousel was designed to run with debris. It’s the first time the platoon has had to clear debris, still, and Jandura said drivers would take as important time as they demanded to get relieve of the pebbles in a” controlled and orderly fashion.”
This is not the first time Perseverance has run into trouble. The rover failed to collect samples during its first attempt, while the Ingenuity copter suffered a processing error during its sixth flight. All the same, this illustrates the challenges of the charge — indeed a putatively rambler task as storing a sample can go amiss in the wrong conditions. And when Mars is so distant, fixes are not inescapably easy or certain.