Back in October last year, NASA engineers managed to repair a drill on the rover, which was damaged for a whole year, and now scientists are again taking samples of Martian rocks. But recently, Curiosity has come across some strange rocks that it simply cannot drill.
The Curiosity team selected a rock to drill a week ago and named it Voyageurs. The rover was supposed to take samples there, but the drill could not break through the rock and got stuck after a few centimeters.
In the entire history of the Curiosity mission, such a failure befell him for the first time, since before all the rocks he encountered succumbed to his borax. The rover recently moved to a new area, and the rocks are probably much stronger there, but scientists want to know why.
"Maybe this harshness is related to the water chemistry in the area?" asks Mark Salvatore, one of the scientists on the rover team. "Or was this hardness caused by cementing when iron-rich water penetrated the sedimentary rocks?"
In any case, new facts will help scientists understand what Mars was like millions of years ago before it turned into a desert, even if the rover did not manage to take samples.
In a few weeks, scientists will try to drill the rock again, in a different location. But in any case, even if Curiosity fails again, we will learn something new about Mars.