Curiosity Rover struggles on Mars, getting stuck on a stubborn rock during a NASA collection operation, and only manages to free itself after robotic arm maneuvers.

Written by Fabio Lucas Carvalho

Published on 07/05/2026 at 09:24

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Curiosity rover got the Atacama rock stuck to its robotic arm during a collection on Mars, in an unprecedented problem for NASA that required vibrations, rotations, and maneuvers until its detachment on May 1st.

The Curiosity rover faced an unprecedented problem on Mars when a rock became stuck in its robotic arm during a sample collection on the Red Planet. NASA released a sequence of images showing the robot’s attempts to free itself from the rock, which only detached after maneuvers performed on May 1st.

Curiosity rover got stuck to a rock on Mars

The incident occurred while drilling a rock nicknamed Atacama. On August 25, the Curiosity rover was using its drill to extract a sample when, upon retracting the robotic arm, the entire rock detached from the ground and remained suspended in the fixed sleeve surrounding the rotary drill.

The Atacama rock measures about 0.4 meters wide at the base, is 15 centimeters thick, and weighs approximately 13 kg. Curiosity’s robotic arm features a 2.7 kg drill, designed to probe Martian rocks, collect material, and store samples.

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Images showed attempt to break free

The series released by NASA was recorded by black-and-white hazard avoidance cameras, positioned on the front of Curiosity’s chassis, in addition to navigation cameras located on the rover’s mast and head. The images show the rock stuck to the robot’s arm and the attempts to solve the problem.

NASA had never faced such a situation. Previous drills had caused fractures or separation of the upper layers of Martian rocks, but an entire rock stuck to a rover’s arm had not occurred before.

Team managed to free the Curiosity rover

The mission team initially tried to vibrate the drill to dislodge the rock, but Atacama remained stuck. On April 29, technicians reoriented Curiosity’s robotic arm and vibrated the drill again, without success.

On May 1st, the team further tilted the drill, rotated it, vibrated it, and initiated new maneuvers. The expectation was to repeat the process several times, but the rock detached on the very first round and fractured upon hitting the ground.

The Curiosity rover landed on Mars on August 5, 2012, and over 13 years, it has been exploring the Red Planet in search of clues about its potentially habitable past.

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Curiosity Rover struggles on Mars, getting stuck on a stubborn rock during a NASA collection operation, and only manages to free itself after robotic arm maneuvers.

Curiosity rover got the Atacama rock stuck to its robotic arm during a collection on Mars, in an unprecedented problem for NASA that required vibrations, rotations, and maneuvers until its detachment on May 1st.

Curiosity rover got stuck to a rock on Mars

Images showed attempt to break free

Team managed to free the Curiosity rover

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Curiosity Rover struggles on Mars, getting stuck on a stubborn rock during a NASA collection operation, and only manages to free itself after robotic arm maneuvers.

Curiosity rover got the Atacama rock stuck to its robotic arm during a collection on Mars, in an unprecedented problem for NASA that required vibrations, rotations, and maneuvers until its detachment on May 1st.

Curiosity rover got stuck to a rock on Mars

Images showed attempt to break free

Team managed to free the Curiosity rover

A giant printer called the “Ferrari” of concrete has landed in Latin America and can already build a 120-square-meter house in just 48 hours, making the traditional construction site look like something from the last century.

Brazil will harvest a record crop of up to 357 million tons of grains, but it does not have the capacity to store a large part of it. The storage deficit has reached the highest level in history and is equivalent to almost the entire production of Argentina.

Four times faster than the Concorde, capable of taking passengers from New York to London in less than an hour at Mach 5.5, and with an engine that switches from turbojet to ramjet mid-flight at Mach 3.5, the Hermeus Quarterhorse went from paper to its first flight in just 19 months.

She started by collecting oyster shells from restaurants and today she has already accumulated more than 10 tons to restore reefs, recover coastal habitats, and demonstrate how a common waste can become a tool for ocean conservation.

SpaceX will dock a $843 million vehicle to the International Space Station to push a nearly 420-ton laboratory against the atmosphere and make the debris fall in a controlled manner into the ocean.

Scientists considered detonating 213 nuclear bombs in the Sahara to create an artificial sea the size of El Salvador, with each explosion being a hundred times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb, and the goal was to generate more energy than Egypt’s largest hydroelectric plant.

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