Mars Rover Extends Robot Arm

Image Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech

 Mars Curiosity

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity extended its robotic arm for the first time on Mars and used its Navigation Camera to capture a view of the extended arm. The view is a mosaic of low-resolution thumbnail images returned to Earth a few hours after the activity on Mars.

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uriosity, NASA's Mars rover has taken another small step for robot-kind.

Engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California say the rover Curiosity flexed its robotic arm Monday for the first time since before its November launch.

"We have had to sit tight for the first two weeks since landing, while other parts of the rover were checked out, so to see the arm extended in these images is a huge moment for us," said Matt Robinson of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, lead engineer for Curiosity's robotic arm testing and operations. "The arm is how we are going to get samples into the laboratory instruments and how we place other instruments onto surface targets."

Weeks of testing and calibrating arm movements are ahead before the arm delivers a first sample of Martian soil to instruments inside the rover. Monday's maneuver checked motors and joints by unstowing the arm for the first time, extending it forward using all five joints, then stowing it again in preparation for the rover's first drive.

"It worked just as we planned," said JPL's Louise Jandura, sample system chief engineer for Curiosity. "From telemetry and from the images received this morning, we can confirm that the arm went to the positions we commanded it to go to."

They say they'll now spend weeks testing and calibrating the 2.1-metre-long arm and its extensive tool kit — which includes a drill, a scoop, a spectrometer and a camera, in preparation for collecting its first soil samples and attempting to learn whether the Martian environment was favourable for microbial life

On Monday engineers unfurled the arm, extended it forward using all five of its joints, then stowed it again.

The test is part of a full health checkup Curiosity has been undergoing since landing in an ancient crater on the red planet Aug. 5. 

SOURCE  NASA

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