Curiosity Rover Encounters Technical Difficulties On Martian Mountain

That is the Curiosity rover's robotic arm, which has gotten caught, endangering its scientific mission. NASA/JPL-Caltech conceal caption

toggle caption

NASA/JPL-Caltech

That is the Curiosity rover's robotic arm, which has gotten caught, endangering its scientific mission.

NASA/JPL-Caltech

Ever since NASA's Curiosity rover landed on Mars in 2012, it has been slowly making its approach alongside hills, dunes and mesas, gathering rock samples all alongside the way in which.

However final week, because it began climbing up a gently sloping mountain, known as Mount Sharp, it began appearing bizarre. NASA engineers now say that part of the extendable arm, the drill that bores into the Martian rock, retains getting jammed.

Simply because the tip hovers just a few inches off the bottom, the drill stops.

"We mentioned 'go,' and it simply did not go," says Ashwin Vasavada, a mission scientist with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

"You possibly can't simply go to Mars and take it aside," he says. So engineers have been working checks to slender down the probabilities for what's inflicting the snag. They've dominated out electrical and software program issues and now suppose it has one thing to do with a brake contained in the motor that strikes the drill.

The rover took this photograph of purplish rocks on the base of Mars' Mount Sharp on Nov. 10. NASA/JPL-Caltech conceal caption

toggle caption

NASA/JPL-Caltech

The rover took this photograph of purplish rocks on the base of Mars' Mount Sharp on Nov. 10.

NASA/JPL-Caltech

Vasavada and his colleagues have managed to get the arm working appropriately once more just a few instances, nevertheless it retains stalling. They want the 7-foot-long arm to reliably fold again into place for the rover to get wherever in a single piece.

"It might be harmful to maneuver it round," says Vasavada, as a result of a heavy set of devices sits on the finish of the arm. Shifting the rover with its appendage prolonged, he says, could be "sort of like if you go over a pace bump after which all people shakes."

So till they will determine what is going on on, Curiosity will keep perched somewhat approach up the mountain, snapping pictures.

Scientists are fascinated with Mount Sharp as a result of its layers of rock are like a timeline extending billions of years into the Martian previous. They're significantly fascinated with clues about how historical lakes and groundwater modified over time, doubtlessly altering the situations that would as soon as have been able to supporting microbial life.

To this point, Curiosity has pushed somewhat beneath 10 miles because it landed on the Purple Planet 4 years in the past.