It seems that the mission the Perseverance rover has run into In mars with a stone in the way. And never better said, because it has been an accumulation of tiny rocks which has caused the rover’s sample collection system has crashed and stopped.
So far, the mission had almost gone like silk. After a failed attempt That had place last August, the rover had managed to extract several samples from various crater zones Jezero, the place regarding him that the rover landed almost a year ago. But during the last rock extraction – the sixth at the moment— something failed during the process.
“However, during the transfer of the piece containing the sample to the tube of samples of the rover (which stores the bits and transfer the tubes to tube processing hardware out there inside the rover), our sensors indicated that there was an anomaly ”, explained Louise Jandura, chief sample engineer for the mission.
When the rover noticed abnormal resistance during the sample storage process, it completely stopped its activity and sent an alert to the mission scientists.. As you can see from the photos they shared later, a series of pebbles blocked the tube.
Jandura acknowledged that they already knew something like this might happen, but that the Perseverence engineers had yet to come up with a method to extract the stones in a “controlled” way. Everything indicates that, hUntil the scientists on the mission come up with a good method to solve the problem, the search for remains of microbial life on Mars will have to wait.
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