Recently, after traveling 2.83 kilometers on Mars, the American Perseverance was stuck by a pebble when sampling, is it a design defect?
There are three rovers driving in the distant Martian world, The Chinese Zhurong, the American Perseverance and curiosity, and perseverance is undoubtedly the most advanced rover, an upgraded version of the Curiosity rover, powered by nuclear batteries, able to collect 43 Samples of Mars, carrying a Mars helicopter.
After driving 2.83 kilometers inside the Mars Jezero Crater, the Perseverance rover encountered a rock with research value, and American experts also specially named the rock - "Issole", perseverance stopped and collected the 6th rock sample from Issole.
After choosing a good position, perseverance unfolded a large 2.1-meter-long robotic arm, using the impact drill at the end of the robotic arm to easily drill into the inside of the rock, and the small robotic arm easily grasped the core, everything was so smooth, after all, this is the 6th sampling of perseverance, light car familiar road, how can it not be smooth?
Many people may not know that perseverance has two mechanical arms, one is a large mechanical arm located in front (2.1 meters long), and the other is a small mechanical arm located in the abdomen, and the small mechanical arm acts as the "little assistant" of the large mechanical arm, which is specially used to grasp the core, put the core into the titanium tube of the large mechanical arm, and then transfer it to the sample system.
Now, the perseverance sampling is only one simple step away, that is, to store the sample, the large robotic arm moves to the rotating wheel entrance of the sample system, close together, the sample inside the titanium tube is transferred to the container where the sample is stored, and the sealed sample tube is finished.
This is the simplest step in the sampling process, unexpectedly the anomaly appeared in this step, when the end of the large robotic arm close to the entrance of the rotating wheel, the sensor unexpectedly recorded the resistance, indicating that there was a foreign body at the entrance of the rotating wheel, and the 6th sampling of The Mars Perseverance had to be declared a failure.
According to the footage taken by the camera at the end of the large robotic arm, a pebble was stuck at the entrance of the rotating wheel, causing the wheel-shaped entrance to be stuck, unable to rotate and close, and the sample tube could not be sealed and stored, so the large robotic arm took out the test tube filled with samples from the rotating wheel-shaped entrance, and re-transferred after the pebble was removed.
Now, NASA experts are working hard to clear the pebbles, otherwise the Mars sampling mission will not be able to continue, which will affect NASA's Mars sampling return mission in 2024, and further afield, even affect the human settlement plan for Mars in 2030.
Some foreign netizens said that such a big trouble is simply a defect in the design of perseverance, the sample system is obviously a container for collecting Martian gravel soil, and the sample is difficult to inevitably drop debris residue during the transfer, is this problem not taken into account before design?
Is it really a design flaw? No, on January 7, 2022, Louise Jandura, chief engineer for sampling and caching at NASA/JPL, said in a blog post that the Perseverance sample system was designed with debris stuck at the entrance of the rotating wheel in mind.
So, getting stuck in the sample system from the pebbles wasn't a big deal, and since this was nasa's first debris removal, it was extra careful to assess the size of the pebbles first and then make sure that in a controlled state, Perseverance was orderly removing the pebbles.
In fact, this is not the first sampling challenge that Perseverance has faced on Mars, in August 2021, Perseverance made a joke when it took its first rock sample, and after all the sampling steps were completed, excited engineers could not wait for perseverance's confirmation photo, and the sample tube was empty.
Left analysis right analysis, and finally the engineers concluded that the rock was too soft, and the core of the core turned into powder after the hollow drill bit was drilled down, and could not be put into the titanium tube, but perseverance did not know, and completed all the sampling steps as planned, drilling holes, sampling, and transferring samples, and the results were empty at first glance.
So now, what should I do if the Perseverance sample system is stuck? Some netizens proposed a solution: is it not enough to break it directly with the drill at the end of the big robot arm? This is indeed an effective method, so you don't need to worry, the Perseverance sample system stuck will be solved soon. Interesting and informative scientific content, please pay attention to the only WeChat public account: Interesting Exploration