Posted on 03/04/2018 9:51:36 AM PST by BenLurkin
Curiosity bored a hole about 0.5 inches (1.3 centimeters) deep into a target rock on Monday (Feb. 26), during the trial run of a new, jury-rigged drilling technique, NASA officials said.
The car-size rover's drill — a key tool at the end of Curiosity's robotic arm that allows it to snag pristine samples from the interiors of ancient rocks — has been out of commission since late 2016...
More than seven months after a malfunction sidelined the rock-boring drill aboard NASA's Curiosity Mars rover, mission team members are still trying to find a solution, or a work-around.
On Dec. 1, 2016, Curiosity detected a problem with its drill feed mechanism, which moves the drill at the end of the rover's 7-foot-long (2.1 meters) robotic arm forward and backward. The car-size robot hasn't drilled any rocks since then.
Rover engineers haven't given up hope of fixing the mechanism, but they're also now investigating new and inventive ways to drill, NASA officials said.
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
HOW? I thought UNESCO declared Mars and the Moon and all that to be protected intergalatic parks that no nation could exploit or harm?
Send that Hogg kid to go fix it. He seems to have all the answers to Life, The Universe, and Everything.
That thing is friggin’ INCREDIBLE:
Originally I think the expected longevity was two weeks, or something.
It’s going on YEARS of service!
Amazing.
Now I see what is the matter with that thing...
no fins, bet it has a back up beeper though.
NASA didn’t get Universal Rockside Assistance?
I don't think i've ever heard of such a large drill.
There is always the lower-tech version of digging...
WOW , Curiosity must be in a Union
LMAO! Good Rover, good boy!
Drill baby, drill!
I'd rather have engineers (jerrys), thank you anyway.
The Soviets must have been pedal-to-the-metal with Lunokhod 2. A lot of driving in just a year.
But nothing compares to having a human operator on-site, as shown by how far the Apollo astronauts drove their buggies in just a few days.
forget that park stuff from UNESCO. There are people who own title to moon plots.
Naw, this a STEM job suitable for Clock Boy.
I should get one to put next to my title for the Golden Gate Bridge I got while I was traveling through SF.
That’s good. Yo’ Rover!
Turns out it wasn't hungry, just "eating" people to find out what they were made of and sending the results back to Mars (using some WWII electronic gear). Some years later I read where our Mars explorer was scooping up soil samples, testing them, and sending the results back to Earth. I always thought that that dog of a movie had a great concept but horrible execution.
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