IT House reported on January 10 that the sample collection of the Perseverance rover encountered some obstacles. NASA reported that after some debris blocked the drill turntable (a device that stores the drill bit and processes it internally through the sample tube), the rover stopped collecting samples.
▲ Image from January 7, 2022, stones can be seen
According to reports, the rover encountered an anomaly on December 29, 2021, but the mission team had to wait until January 6 to send an order to remove the drill bit, remove the robotic arm from the turntable and take a picture.
▲ Detailed drawing of the stone block
These fragments are rubble that falls out of the sample tube during collection, causing the drill bit to not fit neatly in the turntable. The storage of this sample tube is critical to NASA's plan to return samples to Earth.
Louise Jandura, chief sampling engineer at NASA/JPL, noted that the turntable was originally designed to run with debris. However, NASA had to clean up the debris this time, and Jandura said that operators would spend a lot of time clearing the debris in a "controlled and orderly manner."