Stuck

Perseverance rover does the ‘twist’ on Mars to shake loose stuck rocks

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A quick twist and shake relieved NASA’s Perseverance rover on Mars of the last two pebbles clogging its sampling system.  The trouble began during the rover’s sixth Red Planet rock sample, on Dec. 29. Pebbles got stuck along the rover’s bit carousel, which passes rock samples into the spacecraft’s internal handling system for processing. After … Read more

Watch Perseverance Mars rover spit out a stuck rock after choking on sample

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NASA’s Perseverance rover managed to spit out pieces of rock that had been blocking its Mars-sampling gear since late December.  Although the un-choking procedure hadn’t been previously tested, the engineers on the Mars mission found it was rather “straightforward,” the team said in an earlier blog post. It involved pointing the drill containing a clogged … Read more

The Mars rover Perseverance has pebbles stuck in its drill. NASA has a plan to fix it.

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NASA’s Perseverance rover will dump its latest Mars sample to unclog pebbles from its drill.  Perseverance mission managers made the unexpected announcement that they had to dump out Percy’s latest sample via a blog post on Friday (Jan. 14). The team even shared in the post that they never thought they would have to do … Read more

Plants are Stuck as Seed-Eating Animals Decline

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As Earth heats up from the burning of fossil fuels, the climate conditions that species have adapted to are increasingly shifting away from their historical ranges. But while birds and other animals can often fly, walk or swim to follow their preferred environment, plants are quite literally rooted to the ground. They require outside forces … Read more