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After more than a year and a half of inactivity, NASA's MarsCuriosityrover Mineralogy and Chemistry labs are once again surface samples analyzed on the Red Planet.
Due to a mechanical problem, the mobile drill was turned off in December 2016, after collecting its last samples two months earlier.
Mission engineers spent months developing new techniques for drilling and transferring collected samples to the rover's mineral and chemical laboratories.
Curiosity drove a test borehole on May 20 using a method called "extended drilling".
On May 31, rock powder samples collected during this drilling were successfully delivered to the Rover Mineralogy Laboratory using a technique called "extended food sample transfer". . Using the same technique, samples will be delivered to the Curiosity Chemistry Lab next week.
While drilling and transfer techniques have been tested by Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) engineers on Earth, success on Mars is much harder as the atmosphere of the red planet is thin and dry, leading to difficult conditions. .
"On Mars, we must try to visually estimate if it works, just by looking at the images of how much powder is falling," noted John Michael Moorokian, the engineer who pioneered the new sample transfer method. "We are talking about as little as half of a baby aspirin sample."
If the sample is too big or too small, the Curiosity labs will be unable to conduct their analyzes. Transferring too much Martian rock powder may clog various instruments and reject future measurements, while too weak a transfer may prevent laboratories from accurately analyzing the samples.
To successfully transfer samples from the drill to the labs, Curiosity must position its drill bit at two points of entry at the top of the Curiosity Bridge, allowing the rock powder to flow into the labs.
With the drill now permanently extended, Curiosity can no longer access a device that can accurately separate and split powder samples.
Scientist Ashwin Vasavada, also of JPL, said the Curiosity science team had so much confidence in the mission engineers that she brought the robot back to the field that he had already crossed to get samples that would never have been collected.
"It was a feat, it's months and months of work for our team, and JPL engineers had to improvise a new way for the rover to drill rocks on Mars after a disconnected mechanical problem in December 2016," he said. explained Jim Erickson, JPL Curiosity Project Manager.
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