Mars Curiosity Rover Drill Could Malfunction, Short Circuit Entire Mission

The Mars Curiosity rover has a flaw in its drill that could malfunction and short circuit the entire rover, announced NASA.

Unless you do something about it, all hell breaks loose electronically, because it takes our power bus and rattles it around," said Rob Manning, Curiosity's chief engineer. "It's almost like the drill grabs the rover and shakes the whole thing electronically."

Fortunately, NASA did do something about it.

The flaw was discovered too late into the design process to fix. A bond on the drill is prone to wear, and might break when its used, sending current cascading through the whole machine.

NASA engineers included a work around, a preemptive short that can be triggered before the drill is used. This keeps the malfunction isolated and doesn't affect any other systems on board the rover.

"So if this short happens on the spacecraft, it doesn't rattle around everybody," Manning said. "We've been testing all that - to see what's going on, to make sure it all works properly."

The malfunction is unlikely to happen during Curiosity's two-year mission, but NASA has already stated that it will use the rover for as long as it continues to operate.

With its nuclear power source, Curiosity could still be running a decade from now, long enough to see the next planned rover land on the surface of Mars in 2020.

The drill has not yet been used, but scientists are poised to begin. It is capable of drilling up to an inch into the rock of the Martian surface. Until now, previous instruments have only been able to scrape the surface of Martian rocks, or to scoop soil in areas that loosely packed.

Thus far, Curiosity has found organic compounds, but it has yet to determine if those compounds are of Martian origin or if they are contamination brought from Earth.

It has also detected higher concentrations of water, sulfur and perchlorates than expected.