NASA's alien-hunting "detective" crashes

(NLDO) - NASA's $2.7 billion alien life-hunting robot just rotated, shook, used a drill to... "attack" its companion SHERLOC.

A device that helps the Perseverance Mars rover search for potential signs of alien life is back online, NASA said in a new statement.

That's the "detective" SHERLOC, which stopped working in January this year due to... a stuck lens cap.

Perseverance with the "alien-hunting detective" SHERLOC held on its longest arm - Photo: NASA

According to SciTech Daily, the device, named after the detective character Sherlock Holmes of writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, has the full name "Scanning the living environment by Raman and luminescence for organic matter and chemicals".

SHERLOC is one of the most important instruments mounted on NASA's alien life-hunting rover Perseverance.

While analyzing a rock target with its spectrometer and camera, SHERLOC suddenly malfunctioned.

The SHERLOC team's analysis points to a malfunction of a small motor responsible for moving the protective lens cover as well as adjusting the focus for the spectrometer and ACI camera.

In an image taken on June 14 by another camera on Perseverance, it is using SHERLOC. So far, this "companion" is still running stably - Photo: NASA

By testing potential solutions on a duplicate SHERLOC instrument at JPL, the team began a lengthy evaluation process to find the right mission to give Perseverance.

Because no one can reach Mars and the only way is for this robot to do everything by itself.

They tried asking Perseverance to heat up the lens cap's small motor; twist it, shake it, and even "violently" use... the vehicle's on-board hammer drill to try to pop the cap off.

This bizarre repair, similar to the way people try to smash old, broken TVs, ended up saving the expensive hardware of this $2.7 billion robot.

An animation shows Perseverance trying to shake SHERLOC with its lens cover stuck but failing.

“The Mars mission is hard, and getting the instruments back from the brink is even harder,” said scientist Art Thompson, Perseverance project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

Perseverance is in the final stages of its fourth science campaign, searching for evidence of carbonate and olivine deposits in the Margin Unit, an area along the inside rim of the giant Jezero Crater.

Jerreo Crater is an ancient river delta believed to have once teemed with life.

On Earth, carbonates typically form in the shallow waters of freshwater or alkaline lakes. NASA hypothesizes that this may also be the case with the Margin Unit, which formed more than 3 billion years ago.

Now, it can effectively continue this mission thanks to the revival of "detective" SHERLOC.

Source: https://nld.com.vn/tham-tu-san-sinh-vat-ngoai-hanh-tinh-cua-nasa-gap-nan-196240709084516058.htm