The Mars Perseverance rover’s efforts to collect samples from the red planet encountered a significant obstacle. NASA reported that the rover stopped storing samples after the drilling carousel (the device that stores the drill bit and delivers sample tubes for internal processing) was partially blocked by pieces of debris. The rover encountered the anomaly on December 29, but the mission team had to wait until January 6 to remove the drill bit, remove the robot arm from the carousel, and send the image acquisition command to confirm what was happening.
These pieces of debris are thought to be pebbles that fell from the sample tube when lowering the nucleation tip, preventing this piece from sitting properly in the carousel. Storage is crucial to NASA’s plans to eventually bring the samples back to Earth.
Of course, this does not mean that sample collection is over. As NASA/JPL chief sampling engineer Louise Jandura noted, the carousel is designed to work with debris. But this is the first time the team has had to clear the debris, and Jandura said it will take as much time as operators need to get rid of the gravel “in a controlled and orderly manner”.
This isn’t the first problem Perseverance has had. The rover failed to collect samples on its first try, and the Ingenuity helicopter suffered a rendering error during its sixth flight.
Yet this incident illustrates the difficulties of the task. Even the seemingly simple task of collecting and storing samples can go wrong. And because Mars is so far away, corrections are not easy to achieve. In addition, there is absolutely no guarantee that they can be fixed.
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