Science
All driller, no filler
NASA’s Curiosity Rover got a rock stuck to the drill at the end of its robotic arm, necessitating some remote-controlled shaking and jiggling to free the tool.
We’ve all been there, doing a bit of do-it-yourself with a power tool when something awful happens. It might be hitting a pipe while drilling a hole for a Rawlplug. Or punching through a drywall to find nothing beyond.
In this case, NASA’s trundlebot drilled a sample from a rock, lifted its drill and… the rock came too.
The rock, dubbed “Atacama” and measuring 1.5 feet in diameter at its base and 6 inches thick, weighed approximately 28.6 pounds (13 kilograms). After drilling the sample on April 25, the rover operators retracted Curiosity’s arm as they had done many times before. However, this time, the entire rock was lifted, “suspended by the fixed sleeve that surrounds the rotating drill bit,” according to NASA.
So what to do? Had a human been there, a swift poke of the drill would have removed the offending chunk of Mars. But the nearest humans are millions of miles away on Earth, so some remote control shenanigans were needed.
First, the team tried vibrating the drill to shake off the rock. No joy. On April 29, they tried reorienting the robotic arm and vibrating the drill again. Some sand shook loose, but Atacama remained firmly attached to the drill.
Finally, on May 1, the team tried tilting the drill more, rotating and vibrating the drill, and spinning the drill bit, and success! The rock tumbled off, fracturing on the ground.
The rover has been trundling around Mars since 2012, and its drill has presented engineers with the odd headache or two. In 2016, the tool’s feed mechanism, responsible for moving the bit into and out of rocks, didn’t move when commanded. The solution was to use the robotic arm instead, and first drill a shallow pilot hole.
“This,” wrote NASA, “lets Curiosity adjust its arm motion and avoid getting stuck while drilling kind of like you might adjust your arm while drilling into a wall at home.”
The latest incident is also, at least as far as this writer is concerned, just like drilling into a wall at home: a bit more wall than expected came away.
And sadly, unlike this writer, NASA can’t simply call out a professional to do the job properly. ®