Episode 212
Collecting samples on Mars has gone remarkably well considering how challenging it is to operate a drill rig on another planet. But the most recent coring operation was notably dynamic and the drill hasn’t moved for days.
Multiple sols with no public data from Percy. Is it too soon to say “I have a very bad feeling about this”?
I’m glad that we’re still seeing fresh data from Curiosity on the server. There’s a lot of stuff to absorb from this mission, especially if you’re me, but it does help my workflow throughout the day to see the latest from Jezero. No speculation here, just sad vibes.
Multiple sols with no public data from Percy
I just checked again, still no recent images. It’s normal after such an incident for the rovers to go quite while they decide on the best way forward. I would assume they are trying to recreate the issue on the rover in the mars yard facility. I’ve had a few looks at the DSN to see if they are communicating directly with the rover, as that is a good sign that they are getting engineering data directly rather than going through one of the orbiters. I’ve not seen any direct comms sessions direct on the DSN, but that could just be bad timing of my visits. I’ll check again today :) Fingers crossed they get Percy back in action soon :)
New images up - just a few NavCam shots, but we can see that the coring bit has been withdrawn from the hole. Good news, it would seem.
New images up - just a few NavCam shots
Great News indeed…
And to top it off they also have a MastCam-Z of a rock core in the drill / sample tube… No images yet from the CacheCam, but I guess they will wait until they see the MastCam-Z images before they return the drill / core into the cache :)
