NASA: Martian Mountain too rough for Curiosity Rover
NASA's Curiosity Rover arrived on Mars in 2012, for the past four years it has been roaming the red planet through all its rough terrains collecting samples. After a long journey on the planet the Curiosity Rover encountered certain technical difficulties on Martian Mountain.
It turns out that the rough surface of a mountain called Mount Sharp is holding back the Rover to continue its mission, while climbing up the slope NASA engineers explained that the Rover started acting weird, Yahoo reported.
Apparently the extendable arm, which is the drill that bores into the rock, keeps getting jammed often. The drill has reported to be stopping a few inches of the ground.
The Project Scientist with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said when the Rover was asked to go it just did not make an attempt. Engineers say that they have been trying to fix the problem but they certainly can't go to Mars to find the solution.
The Rover will not make any further progress until the drill is back on track; engineers think that it might be something to do with the brake inside the motor that moves the drill, NRP reported.
It would definitely be dangerous to move the Rover around in this condition with its heavy set of instruments. Engineers will find a solution soon to get back the Rover on track but the bright side is even though it has halted up the mountain it can still click pictures of its surrounding.
Mount Sharp has been an interesting study for the Scientists, the rock layers are like a timeline that extends billions of years into the Martian past. It will help them to study how the groundwater and ancient lakes changed over time.
Ever since the Rover landed on Mars it has travelled almost 10 miles and it has given some interesting details to the Scientists.
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