The Perseverance Mars rover’s robotic arm houses the SHERLOC instrument.
It can be quite difficult to fix a technical problem on Earth. NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover team is trying to fix a technical problem with a robot on another planet. There is an attached dust cover on an important instrument that helps the rover search for organic compounds. It puts a crimp in some of the rover’s science functions.
The SHERLOC instrument has a long official name: Raman & Luminescence Scanning of Habitable Environments for Organics and Chemicals. SHERLOC is mounted on the rover’s robotic arm and includes cameras, lasers and a spectrometer. The instrument dust cover has been in operation since January 6th. It is now partially open. “With the shroud in its current position, the instrument cannot use its laser on rock targets and cannot collect spectroscopy data.” NASA said in a statement on February 13.
Dust is a persistent challenge on Mars. The planet is dry and windy and prone to dust devils. Dust caps protect some of the rover’s sensitive instruments from the elements.
NASA is in troubleshooting mode. “To better understand the behavior of the cloak’s motor, the team sent commands to the instrument that change the amount of power fed to it,” the agency said. The rover team hopes to stabilize the dust cover so that SHERLOC can continue its data collection work.
One goal of the Perseverance mission is to search for signs of ancient microbial life. So far, scientists have found no evidence of life on other planets. Mars may be dry and inhospitable today, but it has a history of water and is a great place to study as we consider the question, “Was there ever life beyond Earth?” SHERLOC’s role in this search is to look for molecules that could potentially be linked to life billions of years ago on Mars.
Persistence isn’t equipped to make a definitive call on past life on Mars, so the rover collects and hides rock samples in tubes that could brought back to Earth one day for future study. SHERLOC helped NASA choose which Martian rocks to sample. SHERLOC has found evidence of organic molecules, but these molecules could have been formed by either geological or biological methods.
This is what the SHERLOC instrument looked like before the Perseverance launch to Mars.
There is good news. SHERLOC has a color camera called a wide-angle topographic sensor for operations and engineering. This matches “WATSON” to match the Sherlock Holmes naming theme. WATSON still works. He specializes in close-up photography so scientists can study the surface textures and fine details of rocks.
The technical challenges are par for the course on Mars. Perseverance recently lost the companionship of the ground-breaking Mars Ingenuity helicopter. The invention made history as the first example of powered, controlled flight on another planet. It far exceeded its original mission and completed 72 flights before destroying its rotor blades in January. Ingenuity will not fly again.
Perseverance has been inhabiting Mars since early 2021. It is exploring the Jezero crater and the ruins of an ancient river delta. The SHERLOC error is annoying, but NASA has a long history of working through technical snafus on Mars. Even if SHERLOC cannot fully recover, the rover has other scientific instruments that will help it continue its scientific mission to Mars.
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