{"id":3253,"date":"2026-05-07T17:36:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T17:36:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/?p=3253"},"modified":"2026-05-07T17:36:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T17:36:11","slug":"curiosity-rover-rock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/?p=3253","title":{"rendered":"For 6 days, NASA’s Mars rover battled a rock"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Curiosity<\/a> got itself stuck between a rock and hard place last month, but NASA<\/a> says there\u2019s no reason to fret about the intrepid Mars rover<\/a>. On April 25, mission engineers were remotely piloting its robotic arm\u2019s rotary-percussive drill into a Martian rock<\/a> nicknamed Atacama. It\u2019s a relatively routine task for Curiosity, which takes the samples and then pulverizes them into a powder for future onboard chemical analysis.<\/p>\n

But Atacama is no small stone. The hefty, 1.5-foot-wide geologic formation is about six inches thick and weighs about 28.6 pounds. So NASA engineers were understandably a bit worried when Curiosity attempted to retract its arm\u2014and subsequently lifted the entire rock off the ground.<\/p>\n

\u201cDrilling has fractured or separated the upper layers of rocks in the past, but a rock has never remained attached to the drill sleeve,\u201d the agency explained in a recent rundown<\/a>.<\/p>\n