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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday May 27 2018, @04:59PM   Printer-friendly
from the boring-news dept.

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

We have a lot of respect for the hackers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). When their stuff has a problem, it is often millions of miles away and yet they often find a way to fix it anyway. Case in point is the Curiosity Mars rover. Back in 2016, the probe's rock drill broke. This is critical because one of the main things the rover does is drill into rock samples, collect the powder and subject it to analysis. JPL announced they had devised a way to successfully drill again.

The drill failed after fifteen uses. It uses two stabilizers to steady itself against the target rock. A failed motor prevents the drill bit from retracting and extending between the stabilizers. Of course, sending a repair tech 60 million miles is not in the budget, so they had to find another way. You can see a video about the way they found, below.

Source: https://hackaday.com/2018/05/25/nasa-remotely-hacks-curiositys-rock-drill/


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 27 2018, @07:33PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 27 2018, @07:33PM (#684893)

    It's exactly the kind of fix that would be called a "hack" on Hackaday to justify their stupid site name.

    *reads summary*

    Well, crap. It is Hackaday.