Mars Shot First: Curiosity’s Wind Sensor Damaged

During Mars rover Curiosity’s dramatic landing on Aug. 5, the rocket-powered sky crane blasted debris onto the rover’s deck. The first question that came to mind concerned the safety of exposed and potentially vulnerable instrumentation. I was in the very fortunate position to raise my concerns during the Aug. 9 NASA news briefing. The response from MSL mission manager Mike Watkins was cautious optimism that little to no damage was caused by the unexpected ejection of material from the ground.

Alas, it would seem that some damage was sustained.

“It does appear that some small rocks became lofted in the winds that were generated by the plumes during landing and probably just fell upon the rover deck,” said Curiosity deputy project scientist Ashwin Vasavada, with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., during a conference call on Tuesday (Aug. 21).

“Some of these rocks may have fallen on these exposed circuit boards and damaged the wires. That’s just one potential cause. We don’t know for sure and we don’t really have a way of assessing that at this point any further,” he added.

It appears that one of the booms on the Mars Science Laboratory’s Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) — located on the rover’s mast — may have been the hardware that got sandblasted or smashed by Mars rocks. REMS now only has one (of two) booms operational. The booms’ purpose is to take measurements of wind speed on the Martian surface. Although this is a setback (and, so far, the ONLY setback), mission scientists are confident they’ll find a workaround.

“We’ll have to work a little harder to understand when the wind may be coming from a direction that would be masked by (Curiosity’s) mast … but we think we can work around that,” Vasavada said.

So, it would appear that Mars shot first… but Curiosity shot back. (Thanks @absolutspacegrl and @ArchLundy!)

@astroengine Mars shot first? #pewpew

— Holly (@absolutspacegrl) August 22, 2012

@astroengine So actually the rocks shot first.

— Arch Lundy (@ArchLundy) August 22, 2012

Just in case you have no idea what we’re referring to: