The Perseverance rover had to stop collecting samples, small pebbles were everywhere.
The Perseverance rover’s collection of Martian rock samples just ran into trouble. NASA says the robot had to stop collecting samples after debris partially blocked the carousel (the component that stores retrieved fragments and passes sample tubes to internal processing). The rover encountered this anomaly on December 29, but the mission team decided to wait until January 6 to send a team to retrieve the drill, disconnect the arm from the carousel, and take pictures to verify what happened.
Perseverance rover forced to stop collecting samples
The obstacles in question will be small pebbles that fall out of the pipe at the exit of the drill, exactly preventing these pieces from being properly placed on the carousel. Storage is absolutely essential for NASA if it wants to get these samples back on Earth.
In any case, this does not mean the end of sample collection. NASA JPL Chief Sampling Engineer Louise Jandura explained that the carousel is designed to work with debris. And this is not the first time the team has had to remove him. Louise Jandura clarified that the operators will now take all the necessary time to get rid of these stones, while respecting the current protocols.
Little pebbles were everywhere
This isn’t the first time the Perseverance rover has had problems. The robot failed on its first sample collection attempt, and the Ingenuity helicopter encountered a problem on its sixth flight. And at the same time, all this perfectly illustrates the difficulties of this kind of mission – even such a simple task as collecting and storing a sample can have many problems. And with the planet Mars so far away from our blue planet, fixes are never easy or sure.