Live
- AP assembly session: Govt. to introduce five bills today in house Dy. Speaker election at noon
- Reject BJP’s divisive politics in Maha: Uttam
- Travan Core Devasthanam Issues Guidelines for Ayyappa Devotees Visiting Sabari
- Independent candidate slaps election official
- SC parked Yogi’s bulldozer in garage forever: Akhilesh
- No ‘blame game’ over pollution issue: Mann
- 3 Odisha Police officers get ‘Dakshata’ award
- Punjab To Rebrand Aam Aadmi Clinics Following Central Funding Dispute
- First inscribed ‘Sati Shila’ of Odisha deciphered
- India-China Defence Ministers To Meet Following Historic LAC Disengagement Deal
Curiosity Mars rover develops drill glitch
NASA said its Curiosity Mars rover is not currently using its arm for science as it has detected an issue with a motor that moves the rover\'s drill.
​Washington: NASA said its Curiosity Mars rover is not currently using its arm for science as it has detected an issue with a motor that moves the rover's drill.
Curiosity is at a site on lower Mount Sharp selected for what would be the mission's seventh sample collection drilling of 2016.
The rover team learned this week that Curiosity did not complete the commands for drilling. The rover detected a fault in an early step in which the "drill feed" mechanism did not extend the drill to touch the rock target with the bit, NASA said in a statement on Tuesday.
Curiosity's drill, as used at all 15 of the rock targets drilled so far, combines hammering action and rotating-bit action to penetrate the targets and collect sample material.
"We are in the process of defining a set of diagnostic tests to carefully assess the drill feed mechanism.
We are using our test rover here on Earth to try out these tests before we run them on Mars," said Steven Lee, Curiosity Deputy Project Manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
"To be cautious, until we run the tests on Curiosity, we want to restrict any dynamic changes that could affect the diagnosis.
