Mars Perseverance Sol 330 – WATSON Camera: NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover acquired this picture utilizing its SHERLOC WATSON digital camera, situated on the turret on the finish of the rover’s robotic arm. This picture was acquired on Jan. 23, 2022 (Sol 330) on the native imply photo voltaic time of 16:50:41. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The remaining two pebbles hitching a trip aboard our rover’s bit carousel are gone however not forgotten. I’ll provide the newest on why they’re gone after which let you know why we aren’t forgetting them – or the 2 different pebbles that made our first month of 2022 a busy one.
Confirmation
We had greater than a suspicion the rocks had departed the Perseverance rover on Sunday when imagery of the bit carousel got here down after a brief 16-foot (5 meter) drive to a close-by rocky outcrop. That drive, which happened on the earlier sol, was designed to get us to a small rocky outcrop that will place the rover at an angle that might be helpful for ejecting the pebbles.
To be thorough (as a result of we Mars missions like to be), we did a full rotation of the bit carousel in both directions, with the rover oriented in a 13.2-degree roll to the left, and we found nothing hindering its progress. We also ran the rover’s percussion drill to induce vibration, hoping to shake any possible remaining debris free from the bit holder. Finally, we docked the drill to the bit carousel and dropped off the bit.
With this last step we are happy to announce our sampling system is up and running and ready to go, which is a good thing, since we’re going to use it right away. The science team wants another sample from the rock they call “Issole,” so we drove the 16 feet (5 meters) back and are now in the process of collecting one.
Perseverance Playbook
As you know, Perseverance is the first sample caching mission on the Red Planet. We did a great deal of testing before we got there, but Mars is Mars. The place is cold, unpaved, far away (about 205 million miles [330 million km] right now), and with unexplored, typically uncooperative stuff over each hill and round nearly each boulder. And that lack of cooperation typically extends to the rocks our science crew needs to pattern.
Those of you who’ve been following us – and we admire it! – know that our first try and core a rock was lower than satisfying, with the pattern crumbling earlier than we may accumulate it. But we realized so much from rock goal “Roubion,”and we modified our playbook to grasp higher methods to accumulate samples – and from which rocks. This new “pebbles in bit carousel” affair has additionally allowed us to make additions to our sampling playbook. If we encounter an analogous state of affairs down the Martian highway, we should always have the ability to get again on monitor extra rapidly – which is nice, as a result of Jezero Crater is solely superb and I can’t wait to see what awaits us on the opposite aspect of the subsequent hill.
Written by Avi Okon, Sampling Operations Deputy Lead at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
