The haters will hate, hate, hate, but the Mars rover Curiosity is still grooving, even though its handlers had to spend several days freeing its drill from a rock.
By Adam Kovac edited by Claire Cameron
NASA/JPL
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NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover keeps sailing and can’t stop, won’t stop moving, except when its drill gets stuck in a rock.
The problem started on April 25. This date was supposed to be Curiosity second day of drilling in a 28.6 pound, 1.5 foot wide, six inch thick rock called Atacama. But as the rover attempted to remove its drilling arm, the rock caught up with it, becoming lodged in the sleeve that surrounds the tool’s drill bit.
Back on Earth, Curiosity’s human controllers first tried simply shaking the rock, like a parent trying to free a child with their hand stuck in the cookie jar, but it didn’t work. Then the controllers tried to vibrate the drill to loosen the rock, but without success. Finally, on May 1, they tilted and rotated the drill while rotating the bit, and after a few tries the rock came loose, breaking into smaller pieces as it hit the ground.
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NASA/JPL-Caltech
The rock debris will be analyzed by Curiosity’s Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument and compared with samples taken from another site, Mineral King, located nearly 525 feet below the rover’s current location.
With this free tool, Curiosity can continue to explore Gale Crater on Mars, where it has spent the last 14 years, or nine Taylor Swift epochs. Currently, the rover’s environmental team on Earth is using the robot to monitor atmospheric dust on Mars, as well as to study cloud movements and document the activity of short-lived whirlwinds called dust devils.
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