For more than a week, the Mars rover Perseverance has been experiencing a technical problem. During rock sampling, debris would have blocked the deposit of samples in the frame of the device. NASA has unveiled its plan to restore the functioning of the Perseverance mechanism.
It has been almost two weeks since the rover Perseverance ceased operations on Mars. On January 7, 2022, NASA released a statement explaining that small pebbles were blocking the mechanism allowing the robotic arm to store the samples from the 6and drilling took place on December 31, 2021. On January 14, the American space agency announced that it had launched a cleaning operation for the mechanism, clearing away the small rocks by… emptying the tube from the last collection mission.
How to Restore Perseverance
The incident occurred during the storage procedure of the sample obtained during the 6and collection mission of Martian rocks. the robotic arm, comprising drill and dust tube, was to insert the latter into a carousel guiding the samples to the rover’s chassis and its storage system. But Perseverance’s arm soon encountered a resistance, preventing him from inserting the tube into the carousel. Some photographs of the Watson camera made it possible to identify some rock debris, blocking the mechanism.
NASA and the engineers of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) thus initiated a “cleaning” procedure on January 12, by first emptying tube 261, from which breakaways the rocks responsible for the blockage. So the rover poured the samples onto the mars soil, making it possible to preserve the tube for future drilling of the “Issole” rock, the target of the sampling mission of December 29. ” I never imagined that we would have to perform this maneuver », wrote Jennifer Trosper, JPL project manager on Perseverance.
Last weekend, the rover performed a mitigation, attempting to reduce the amount of debris blocking the carousel. This was activated twice, while the cameras imaged the maneuver to determine if the stones had fallen to the ground. For the time being, NASA has still not given any new information concerning Perseverance and the operations of the previous weekend. The rover is currently still immobilized in the area of South Setah, south of Jezero Crater.
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