Mars Rover Curiosity Hits the Road Again After Short Circuit

[rdunk]

Well, Curiosity is "ON THE ROAD AGAIN!!! It will be good to have more of those Mars Rover pics streaming back here again!! One just never knows what NASA is going to let "slip through the crack", with their manipulation of the data!!!

by Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer   |   March 13, 2015

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity is back in action for the first time after suffering a glitch late last month.

The 1-ton Curiosity rover transferred powdered rock sample from its robotic arm to an analytical instrument on its body on Wednesday (March 11), and then drove about 33 feet (10 meters) toward the southwest on Thursday (March 12), NASA officials said.

Curiosity had been stationary since Feb. 27, when it experienced a short circuit while attempting to transfer the sample, which the rover had collected from a rock dubbed Telegraph Peak.

"That precious Telegraph Peak sample had been sitting in the arm, so tantalizingly close, for two weeks. We are really excited to get it delivered for analysis," Curiosity Project Scientist Ashwin Vasavada, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in a statement.

Engineers have spent much of the past two weeks trying to figure out exactly what caused the short circuit. Testing suggests that it originated in the percussive mechanism for Curiosity's arm-mounted drill (which hammers as well as rotates to bore into rock).

The rover team will continue their analyses to determine how to proceed with future drilling work, NASA officials said.

More: http://www.space.com/28823-mars-rover-curiosity-short-circuit-drive.html