{"id":480298,"date":"2026-05-12T04:35:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T04:35:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/480298\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T04:35:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T04:35:11","slug":"nasas-curiosity-takes-close-look-at-rock-that-got-stuck-on-drill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/480298\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA&#8217;s Curiosity Takes Close Look at Rock That Got Stuck on Drill"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>NASA\u2019s Curiosity Mars rover used its Mast Camera, or Mastcam, to capture this view of a rock nicknamed \u201cAtacama\u201d on May 6, 2026, the 4,877th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. The rock had gotten <a href=\"https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/photojournal\/nasas-curiosity-rover-frees-its-drill-from-a-rock\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">stuck to the drill<\/a> on the end of Curiosity\u2019s robotic arm on April 25. Engineers spent several days repositioning the arm and vibrating the drill to try and get the rock loose, finally <a href=\"mailto:https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/photojournal\/nasas-curiosity-rover-frees-its-drill-from-a-rock\/\">detaching the rock<\/a> on May 1.<\/p>\n<p>Atacama is estimated to be 1.5 feet in diameter at its base and 6 inches thick. It would weigh roughly 28.6 pounds (13 kilograms) on Earth (and about a third of that on Mars). The circular hole produced by Curiosity\u2019s drill is visible in the rock.<\/p>\n<p>This mosaic is made up of eight images that were stitched together after being sent back to Earth. The color has been approximately white-balanced to resemble how the scene would appear under daytime lighting conditions on Earth.<\/p>\n<p>Curiosity was built by NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California. JPL leads the mission on behalf of NASA\u2019s Science Mission Directorate in Washington as part of NASA\u2019s Mars Exploration Program portfolio. Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego built and operates Mastcam.<\/p>\n<p>To learn more about Curiosity, visit:<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\"><a href=\"https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/mission\/msl-curiosity\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">science.nasa.gov\/mission\/msl-curiosity<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASA\u2019s Curiosity Mars rover used its Mast Camera, or Mastcam, to capture this view of a rock nicknamed&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":480299,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[270],"tags":[18,19,17,165548,107163,133,451],"class_list":{"0":"post-480298","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-mars-science-laboratory-msl","12":"tag-photojournal","13":"tag-science","14":"tag-space"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116559748992653136","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=480298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480298\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/480299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=480298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=480298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=480298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}