The sample collection of the Mars Perseverance rover has run into a problem. The bit carousel, the device that stores drill bits and passes sample tubes for internal processing, was partially blocked by debris. The mission team had to wait until January 6th to send a command to extract the drill bit, unhook the robot arm from the carousel and take pictures to verify what happened.
The sample tube fell out when the coring bit was dropped, preventing it from sitting neatly in the carousel. NASA's plans to eventually return the samples to Earth are dependent on the storage.
This isn't the end of sample gathering. Louise Jandura, NASA/JPL's chief sampling engineer, said the carousel was designed to run with debris. Operators would take as much time as they needed to get rid of the pebbles in a controlled and orderly fashion.
Perseverance has run into trouble before. The Ingenuity helicopter experienced a processing error during its sixth flight, while the rover failed to collect samples during its first attempt. This shows the challenges of the mission, even a seemingly pedestrian task as storing a sample can go awry in the wrong conditions. When Mars is so far away, fixes aren't always certain.
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