How Does Nasa Repair Equipment On Mars?
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NASA'southward Curiosity Rover landed on Mars in 2022, and people around the world cheered. Humans have yet to land on Mars, and the rover lets scientists run experiments, such as testing soil and rock samples for evidence of liquid water, or chemicals that could point to signs of life.
But what happens when the $2 billion lab on wheels runs into bug? How exercise engineers on Globe fix the rover from millions of miles away?
In 2022, Marvel's drill, the key instrument to collecting those rock samples, stopped working.
This is how the drill works: A drill bit makes holes that are a little smaller than a dime, and 2 prongs concord the rock or whatever it is Curiosity is drilling into, to keep it steady.
Imagine trying to drill a pigsty into a block of forest on Earth, said Megan Lin, mechanical engineer and deputy project manager. First, you lot would agree the wood, or clamp information technology to a table, to go on it steady. Curiosity's two prongs are similar the hands or clench stabilizing the thing being drilled.
"Now, you've created a nice stable workspace, it'southward almost like a drill printing," Lin said.
Considering of this blueprint, Curiosity also needs a feed mechanism to poke the drill bit out. There were some occasional problems with the feed mechanism getting stuck. Lin and her colleagues spent months testing different solutions, which meant months without any drilling or soil samples.
Finally, they managed to get the drill to poke out again, simply it however doesn't go in and out smoothly, the way it's supposed to.
And the engineers decided that if the drill is going to be stuck in one position, it would be amend to accept information technology stuck poking out, rather than stuck inside. The engineers tested the drill, and it still works.
Just at that place are two more issues:
First, Curiosity no longer has the two hands to hold whatever it's drilling steady. Now, it'south like holding a drill with i hand, which means it can dangle and motility around. But at least the drill is working again.
Second, engineers had to come up up with a new way of getting the rock samples out of the drill.
The original design had a funnel and a sieve, called the CHIMRA system, to transport the stone samples into the science instruments for testing. But that relied on the drill being able to move in and out
Emily Lakdawalla, who wrote a book about the design and engineering of Curiosity, explained it similar this: "The drill feed is now extended all the way out all the time, that funnel isn't lined up with CHIMRA anymore, and then the whole CHIMRA system is useless. It doesn't get used anymore: You tin't portion out cloth; you tin can't sieve it; you tin can't deliver a fine portion, or a fibroid portion, or any of those things."
The engineers did a lot of testing, and they landed on a solution: They could make the drill spin backwards, to shake the samples out of the drill and into the science instruments.
"It'southward non as accurate every bit it used to be," Lakdawalla said. "They'll become big chunks in with the small-scale chunks, they can't ever truly know if they take delivered what they hope they do, they can't ever know beforehand how much material is really stored inside the drill chamber. Then in that location's a lot more uncertainty with this solution, but it is still enabling the rover to apply its science instruments and continue its science mission. It's ameliorate than nada."
It took the engineers more than a year to come up with that answer, but that's what repairs to Curiosity look similar, said Megan Lin.
"Because we can't affect the hardware on Mars, a lot of what'southward bachelor to us in terms of fixing information technology is in software or in the procedures that we ourselves follow, so you lot'll see a lot of fixes to very mechanical problems are to use that instrument differently."
That means less a repair and more like: How can the engineers and scientists work around the problem to still do the science they want to do, in a different fashion?
The teams at NASA have 2 things going for them: Hardware that's more powerful than it needs to be, and their own creativity.
The powerful hardware creates some slack for engineers to draw on. For example, Marvel has two computer systems when it could get by with simply one, which has proved useful, said Lin.
"Anytime you want to upload new flight software to your rover, you kind of want to have that adequacy of having two computers, because otherwise it's akin to doing brain surgery on yourself while you're however awake," she said. "It's actually nice for a calculator when you can … put information technology to sleep and do a full shutdown and upload your new flight software and test it out without that beingness your primary encephalon that's operating."
The engineers too rely on their inventiveness to think how they can use the existing equipment and the Martian environment to their advantage.
A skillful example is a maneuver to fix the wheels that the engineers have come upward with and tested, merely accept non had to use notwithstanding.
Marvel is a lab on wheels, specifically six aluminum wheels, about 20 inches in bore. Those wheels go worn out eventually. Imagine rolling vi aluminum cans back and forth over sand and rocks — eventually, the tin is going to coil over something sharp enough at just the correct angle to cut a hole.
Also, the pattern is such that the part of the wheels that face inside the rover is under a little more stress than the office of the wheels that face outside. So if any part of the wheels break, it'll be the inside. Which means as Curiosity is rolling these cans back and along, a wheel break could mean that a tin can opener has cutting open the top part, and then the border is no longer shine, but jagged. And the jagged edge is on the side that's facing the cables, the instruments … the valuable bits you do not want to impairment, said organisation engineer Evan Graser.
"The risk of cutting a cable is 1 that is of great business: Non only would that basically hateful that y'all would lose a wheel, you would non exist able to drive that wheel anymore, and nosotros'd have to elevate it along with the states, only you could potentially cause electric damage even farther upwards the chain with the actual motor controller."
So Graser and his colleagues tested a manner to intentionally drive a damaged wheel into a rock to rip and break off a jagged border.
"Information technology was one of the coolest things I'd ever seen. I was very excited that function of my task was to go interruption something on purpose," he said.
They tested it, and information technology works. The wheels are nowhere near that level of damage now, simply if that scenario plays out, NASA now has a programme for it.
That'southward a lot of piece of work to put into fixing one drill or ane potential wheel problem, but right now, these rovers are all nosotros have on the surface of Mars, said Emily Lakdawalla.
"The rovers are like an extension of ourselves," she said. "It's well-nigh similar another prepare of senses or another, an extension of your trunk … into a place that humans tin't commonly go."
Curiosity was expected to last on Mars for two years. Simply thank you to the redundant designs, and the engineers on Earth working on bug, information technology'due south been there for almost a decade.
Source: https://whyy.org/segments/how-nasa-repairs-its-rovers-on-mars-without-ever-touching-them/
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