{"id":16497,"date":"2015-03-07T19:50:09","date_gmt":"2015-03-07T11:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/glitch-on-curiosity-rover-traced-to-drill-mechanism\/"},"modified":"2015-03-07T19:50:09","modified_gmt":"2015-03-07T11:50:09","slug":"glitch-on-curiosity-rover-traced-to-drill-mechanism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/glitch-on-curiosity-rover-traced-to-drill-mechanism\/","title":{"rendered":"Glitch on Curiosity rover traced to drill mechanism"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The
The mast camera on the Curiosity Mars rover captured this raw color view of the craft\u2019s drill after collecting a rock powder sample Feb. 24. Credit: NASA\/JPL-Caltech\/MSSS<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Officials are assessing how to adjust operations to collect future rock core samples with NASA\u2019s Curiosity Mars rover after identifying its drill as the likely source of a short circuit that stopped the rover\u2019s movement in late February.<\/p>\n

The rover ran into the problem Feb. 27 as it tried to transfer a drill sample to its on-board instruments for analysis. Curiosity\u2019s fault-protection software automatically detected the glitch \u2014 described by NASA as a fluctuation in an electrical current \u2014 and halted movement of the robotic arm, which holds the drill and sampling mechanism.<\/p>\n

The rover has kept still since the problem occurred, as engineers on Earth analyze the cause of the short circuit.<\/p>\n

\u201cDiagnostic testing this week has been productive in narrowing the possible sources of the transient short circuit,\u201d said Jim Erickson, Curiosity\u2019s project manager at NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. \u201cThe most likely cause is an intermittent short in the percussion mechanism of the drill. After further analysis to confirm that diagnosis, we will be analyzing how to adjust for that in future drilling.\u201d<\/p>\n

Curiosity drilled into a rock at the base of Mount Sharp \u2014 a towering peak on Mars where layered sediments could hold clues of an ancient habitable Martian environment \u2014 in late February.<\/p>\n

NASA says the drill unit uses rotation and a hammering motion to push into rocks. Powder from rocks drilled by Curiosity is captured in the grooves of the drill, then shaken into a mechanism to sift the sample before it is dropped into the rover\u2019s miniature laboratory.<\/p>\n

Curiosity uses a percussive mechanism to clear the powder off the drill\u2019s grooves.<\/p>\n

Engineers this week repeated the motion of the drill that led to the short circuit as part of testing to determine the cause.<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring the third out of 180 up-and-down repeats of the action, an apparent short circuit occurred for less than one one-hundredth of a second,\u201d NASA said in a status report Friday. \u201cThough small and fleeting, it would have been enough to trigger the fault protection that was active (Feb. 27) under the parameters that were in place then.\u201d<\/p>\n

The rover gathered five previous drill samples with no problems.<\/p>\n

Ground controllers plan to move the rover\u2019s robotic arm and check if the short circuit goes away when the appendage is in a different orientation.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter those tests, the team expects to finish processing the sample powder that the arm currently holds and then to deliver portions of the sample to onboard laboratory instruments,\u201d status report said. \u201cNext, Curiosity will resume climbing Mount Sharp.\u201d<\/p>\n

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The mast camera on the Curiosity Mars rover captured this raw color view of the craft\u2019s drill after collecting a rock powder sample Feb. 24. Credit: NASA\/JPL-Caltech\/MSSS Officials are assessing how to adjust operations to collect future rock core samples with NASA\u2019s Curiosity Mars rover after identifying its drill as the likely source of a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2927,367],"class_list":["post-16497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-curiosity","tag-mars"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16497"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16497\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}