World News Headlines January 9, 2022 Under One Ceiling 0 NASA Mars rover’s mission interrupted by Elmo’s nemesis: A small rock. 0 0000 0 0 more NASA Mars rover’s mission interrupted by Elmo’s nemesis: A small rock. January 9, 2022 Under One Ceiling now playing Transferring money from UAE abroad: what are my cheapest options January 9, 2022 Under One Ceiling WIN With Nespresso This Mother’s Day January 9, 2022 Under One Ceiling NBA Playoffs 2022: A Casual Fan's Guide to the Postseason January 9, 2022 Under One Ceiling Best New Climbing Gear of 2022 January 9, 2022 Under One Ceiling A Local Weekend Travel Guide to Austin, Texas January 9, 2022 Under One Ceiling First Drive: 2022 Range Rover Ups the Luxury SUV Experience January 9, 2022 Under One Ceiling Most Stylish Rain Jackets, Parkas, and Trench Coats for Men January 9, 2022 Under One Ceiling EU eyes Russian oil import ban as Moscow strikes western Ukraine January 9, 2022 Under One Ceiling World-class Clark Int’l Airport opens new 110,000 square-meter passenger terminal January 9, 2022 Under One Ceiling PCG: Bodies of 5 children who drowned in Taal Lake found January 9, 2022 Under One Ceiling NASA Mars rover’s mission interrupted by Elmo’s nemesis: A small rock. Elmo isn’t the only one struggling to deal with a small rock in recent days. On Friday, NASA’s Twitter account for the Mars-researching Perseverance rover blasted out some news and a set of photos to go with it: The rover is having trouble stowing away its latest collected sample of the Mars landscape because some rocks are getting in the way. Tweet may have been deleted “I recently captured my sixth rock core and have encountered a new challenge,” the tweet, which is written from the rover’s first-person perspective, reads. “Seems some pebble-sized debris is obstructing my robotic arm from handing off the tube for sealing/storage.” The sample in question was collected on Dec. 29, extracted from the core of a rock — marking only the sixth time in the history of human space exploration that a rock was cored on a planet other than Earth. But when the rover went to pass the collection tube along through the automated process by which gathered samples are stored, the process was interrupted when “our sensors detected an anomaly,” according to NASA. As Perseverance attempted to move the sample tube from the percussive drill used to core rocks into the “bit carousel” where samples are staged for storage, it encountered an unusual amount of resistance. The rover’s engineers asked Perseverance for more data and images in the hopes of understanding what the issue was, but it took extra time because of the distance involved in communicating with a semi-autonomous rover situated more than 200 million miles from Earth. Clarity came on Jan. 6, when the struggling sample tube was extracted and images of the obstruction were beamed back to Earth. “These most recent downlinked images confirm that inside the bit carousel there are a few pieces of pebble-sized debris,” NASA’s post reads. “The team is confident that these are fragments of the cored rock that fell out of the sample tube.” That’s why there was a struggle transferring the tube to the bit carousel: One or more annoying, little rocks got in the way. SEE ALSO: NASA’s Perseverance rover beamed back postcard-worthy views of Mars It’s nothing the Perseverance team didn’t anticipate happening at some point during the rover’s mission. But this is the first time the collection process has had to pause for “debris removal,” and “we want to take whatever time is necessary to ensure these pebbles exit in a controlled and orderly fashion.” It’s not clear if any of the offending pebbles related to an Earthbound pet rock named Rocco. But you can bet Elmo has thoughts about all of this. Related Related posts: Bird attempts to make it harder to scoot under the influence After mudslide, priest gets narcos’ help to build new town Biden tells Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett he wants diplomatic solution to Iran tags: RSS Feed World News 0000 0 0 previous Elon Musk jacks up price of questionably named 'full self driving' next Colossal Webb telescope completes a phenomenal feat in space
