Mars pebbles challenge NASA’s Mars rover Perseverance

NASA’s Mars rover Perseverance, which went on its mission to Mars, is collecting samples of rocks there. These samples will be sent to Earth in the future through a manned mission to be launched on Mars. Some debris like pebbles are causing problems in this sampling process. Everything was successful in the beginning. Perseverance had extracted a sample from a Martian rock named Issol. But while storing that sample, the sensor of the rover raised problems. After this the rover stopped its work and contacted its monitoring system on Earth. This incident happened on December 29.

The Perseverance team scoured the data to understand why there was a problem with the rover’s sensor. About a week later, the team found some pebble-sized debris. This was hindering the work of Perseverance’s robotic arm.

A blog by Louise Jandura, chief engineer for sampling and caching at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Post I said, the team is confident that this debris fell out of the collection while sampling the rock. NASA engineers are now trying to systematically remove the debris. Since this is happening for the first time, engineers want to take their time to clear the debris. The latest data will be seen by this weekend. After that the next plan will be decided.

Perseverance has been telling us about many discoveries since it landed on Mars in February this year. Jezero Crater After nearly 10 months of driving around Jezero Crater, researchers are beginning to understand that the region probably formed from a long-dormant Martian volcano. NASA scientists believe that this discovery will help to better understand the history of the planet.

In a report recently, NASA revealed that crater rocks have interacted with water several times since their origin. Some organic molecules are also present in these rocks. The NASA research team thought about the origin of these rocks even before Perseverance landed on Mars.