NASA Perseverance Rover Successful at Declogging Rock Pieces Out of Sampling Tubes [Watch]

NASA announced that the Perseverance rover was able to remove the small rocks that blocked the sampling tubes for weeks now. Since late December, the pieces served as interference to the rock collection of the rover, delaying the schedule further than the space agency's expected dates.

Perseverance was not tested to perform the unblocking phase for the sampling gear. But the experts behind the Mars mission theorized that the process is more straightforward than complex. According to a report from NASA, the task included an approach where the clogged test tube inside the drill was faced down to the Martian surface and spun multiple times until the rocks were ejected.

Declogging of Perseverance Caught on Mastcam-Z Camera

(Photo: NASA via Getty Images)
UNSPECIFIED: In this concept illustration provided by NASA, NASA's Perseverance (Mars 2020) rover uses its drill to core a rock sample and store them in sealed tubes on the planet's surface for future missions to retrieve in the area known as Jezero crater on the planet Mars. A key objective for Perseverance's mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet's geology and past climate, paving the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith.

In a stunning event, the Perseverance rover was captured in a video spitting out pieces of rock by the high-definition camera, Mastcam-Z. NASA uploaded the video on Twitter. The clip showed the fast rotation of Perseverance's drill as small bits of Martian rock were being thrown back to the ground.

In their recent statement, the Mars mission team explained that the declogging was necessary to continue gathering more samples required for studies. The video included how the cored rocks dropped to the surface one by one as the drill spun continuously. Fortunately, the declogging was successful, and the rover can use the tube again for a separate batch of rocks.

Perseverance's unclogging attempt, according to a Space report, needed two consecutive phases to get the treatment done. The first few pieces of rock were initially forced out last Saturday, January 15. The remaining pebbles were removed last Thursday, January 20.

Perseverance is currently on its sixth attempt at gathering Martian samples since it got to the planet on February 2021. The rock collection is part of a bigger project that includes returning the samples back here on Earth. The expected deadline of the sampling is in the early 2030s, in which the samples will be retrieved by a joint mission between NASA and the European Space Agency.

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Perseverance Continues on Gathering Rock Samples

The main purpose of Perseverance's rock sampling is to find the evolutionary gems hidden on the red planet. Through the rocks, scientists will have substantial clues about the past and early age of Mars, including its planetary structure development, how it was formed, and if a life existed on its surface.

The rock pieces in the problematic tube were first detected on December 29. On that day, Perseverance's robotic arm attempted to put a rock sample to the chassis where a rotating wheel-like container device was kept. Experts were alerted with resistance when the rover tried to close the sampling tube.

The pieces of rock that clogged the rover's sampling devices were identified. According to the experts, the tiny fragments were part of a larger rock called Issole. According to the report by NASA, the Perseverance team will run through a drilling process on the same rock once more.

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