91Èȱ¬

A robot on Mars has bitten off more than it can chew while collecting rock samples on the red planet.

Perseverance was sent to Mars last year by US space agency Nasa to find out more about our nearest planetary neighbour.

The Mars rover has been successfully collecting small samples of rock to bring back to researchers on Earth.

But in late December, it ran into trouble after pebbles fell into its machinery, causing it to malfunction.

On December 29, Perseverance drilled into a rock to take out a sample.

Perseverance uses different types and sizes of drilling bits (the long, thin cylinder of metal that you put into drills to make holes) to extract rock samples.

When the rover tried to return its drill bit, with the sample, to its container things went wrong!

Louise Jandura, chief engineer for sampling, explained that Perseverance recorded more 'resistance' than it usually does while collecting samples.

Nasa requested that the robot send them an image of what is happening inside its machinery.

After receiving photos of its hardware, they realised Perseverance had gathered more rocks than planned!

Pebbles had fallen into the the drill bit container, causing Perseverance's arm to malfunction.

Thankfully, Louise Jandura says that the engineers who built Perseverance had predicted a problem like this might happen.

So there is a solution, but she says it might take them a while to figure out a way to allow the pebbles to "exit in a controlled and orderly fashion."

In a blog post written for Nasa, Louise said it's worth spending the time to solve this issue and not rush to an answer.

"One thing we've found is that when the engineering challenge is hundreds of millions of miles away... it pays to take your time and be thorough."

"So that when we do hit the un-paved Martian road again, Perseverance sample collection is also ready to roll."

Hopefully Perseverance is able to cough out those pebbles soon and get back to the mission at hand!