Mars rover recovers from glitch during drilling

Washington Post : NASA’s Curiosity rover is once more up and running after having experienced a short circuit during its drilling operations on 27 February. Since last September Curiosity has been exploring an area called Pahrump Hills at the base of Mars’s Mount Sharp. It uses a robotic arm to drill into boulder on the planet’s surface, turn the rock to powder, and then collect it in an instrument on board. While getting a sample from Telegraph Peak, however, the rover suffered the short circuit. The sample then sat in the arm for the next two weeks as engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory tried to figure out what caused the problem. They have determined that it originated in the percussive mechanism of the arm-mounted drill and are continuing to study it to identify the best way to proceed with future drilling operations.