Perseverance Rover Overcomes Vision Issues on Mars, Thanks to NASA’s Fix

Science

NASA has successfully repaired a crucial instrument on the Perseverance rover, which is exploring Mars. The Sherloc instrument, which stands for Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals, is designed to look for signs of ancient microbial life on the Red Planet. It had been out of action since January due to a malfunction.

The issue started on January 6 when a lens cover, which is supposed to protect Sherloc’s spectrometer and one of its cameras from dust, got stuck. This instrument, located at the end of the rover’s movable arm, uses two cameras and a spectrometer.

A tweet from NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover account on June 26, 2024, announced the good news: “A lens cover on my SHERLOC instrument got stuck a while back, preventing me from collecting certain types of data that help me look for potential signs of ancient microbial life. But thanks to my ingenious team my instrument is operational again!”

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which manages the Perseverance rover, identified the problem as a small motor that moves the lens cover and adjusts the focus for the spectrometer and the Autofocus and Context Imager (ACI) camera.

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To fix the problem, engineers at JPL used a duplicate Sherloc instrument on Earth to test possible solutions. They tried heating the motor, rotating the instrument with the rover’s robotic arm, and even using the rover’s percussive drill to open the lens cover.

By March 3, images from Perseverance showed that the ACI cover had opened more than 180 degrees, clearing the camera’s view. However, the team still needed to fix the focus issue to ensure Sherloc could take clear images and gather strong spectral data.

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Since they couldn’t adjust the focus of the instrument’s optics directly, they used the rover’s robotic arm to make tiny adjustments in the distance between Sherloc and its target.

“After testing first on Earth and then on Mars, we figured out the best distance for the robotic arm to place Sherloc is about 40 millimeters or 1.58 inches. At that distance, the data we collect should be as good as ever,” said Kyle Uckert, Sherloc deputy principal investigator at JPL.

By May 20, the ACI had successfully focused on a Martian rock, and by June 17, the spectrometer was confirmed to be working properly.

With this problem solved, Perseverance has resumed its mission, investigating an area in the Jezero crater that may contain evidence of carbonate and olivine deposits, which could have formed underwater.

(Image: NASA/JPL)