A new #NASA status update now confirms that "[...] a SHERLOC issue during these proximity science activities left the arm unstowed and prevented us from driving away. The team has since stowed the arm, #Mars2020 engineers have been working to diagnose the issue, and the rover has resumed driving."
@65dBnoise It seems pretty clear now that the "issue" is a stuck lens cover of the SHERLOC ACI instrument.
We have been seeing a bunch of images from ACI that show some blurred structures that I now identified.
I'm almost certain that we are seeing the rim of the "camera lens" in the reflection of the half opened lens cover.
The black and white insert image is an ACI image from Sol 1043.
@andrealuck They didn't make a big fuzz about it. I think they were hoping to fix it before making any big announcements, but given how long it has been I don't have much hope for that filter wheel.
It's sad because it means we likely won't get many color panoramas from Curiosity now. The 110mm camera just has a far too narrow field of view for that to be practical.
Though I would be happy if they take MAHLI selfies instead :)
@AkaSci Thanks for the Navcam image.
Last weekend something was changed about the raw-images API and now Areobrowser is not able to fetch the Perseverance images anymore. This makes it a lot harder for me to follow the mission progress.
@65dBnoise Perseverance also took a movie sequence on Sol 1040 over the course of 20 seconds. Presumably the team tried to actuate the cover during that time and wanted to observe if anything moved.
However in the wide view no movement can be seen.
@65dBnoise@Landru79
Zooming in on the hinge we can see a tiny bit of sideways movement, but at most one millimeter.
Not clear if this is related to the actuator movement or if it is just random movement due to wind or vibrations from the rover.
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