The Perseverance has stalled. While collecting stones from Mars, some have gotten stuck. And although it was not planned, the robot will have to return a few samples to be able to continue performing its sampling task.
And to do it, he has already received the appropriate commands, he has analyzed the surface where he will be able to send the stones back to their place of origin, and he is preparing to carry out the task, something that was not foreseen and whose project director, Jennifer Trosper, in an update on the rover on Friday, said it was something “I never imagined we would do.”
What will Perseverance do?
“Simply put, we are returning the remaining contents of sample tube 261 (our last rock core sample) to its home planet.” NASA’s Mars 2020 mission team has been working to remove uninvited pebbles from Perseverance’s carousel of bits. During the previous weekend, and earlier this week, operational sequences to remove these rocky intruders were developed and tested.
“With ground experimentation complete, we have started to execute our mitigation strategy on Mars. On January 12 we did a detailed imaging study of the ground below Perseverance. This was done so that we would have a good idea of what rocks and pebbles already exist.” down there before a few more, from our carousel of bits, join them in the not-too-distant future.”
“The team embarked on a maneuver with our robotic arm that I never imagined we would perform, ever. In a nutshell, we are returning the remaining contents of Sample Tube 261 (our last core rock sample) to its home planet. Although this scenario was never designed or planned before launch, it turns out that pouring a core from an open tube is a fairly straightforward process (at least during tests on Earth). We sent orders yesterday, and later today the rover’s robotic arm will simply point the open end of the sample tube toward the surface of Mars and let gravity do the rest.”
And they do this return maneuver because they don’t know exactly how many stones are in the tube. If you want to see pictures of what the Rover does every day, a few days ago he sent 1800 images that are still unprocessed.
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