NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover Was Stuck in a Rock: Watch It Free Itself
Problems in space can be complex and dangerous. But NASA's Curiosity Mars rover spent the end of April embroiled in a much simpler problem: It got stuck in a rock.
Curiosity's woes began on April 25 when it drilled into a 28-pound rock NASA nicknamed Atacama. In a moment that could've come straight out of a Flintstones episode, Curiosity became stuck, and when it tried to pull its drill out, it yanked the whole rock with it.
"Drilling has fractured or separated the upper layers of rock in the past, but a rock has never remained attached to the drill sleeve," NASA said in a blog post.
Such problems are comical here on Earth, where we can just shake the tool and the rock around until it's free. Not so on Mars. Radio signals can take nearly half an hour to travel between Earth and Mars. Curiosity's controllers had...
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