Abstract
Curiosity has unprecedented capability for interacting with the Martian surface using a collection of hardware called the Sample Acquisition, Processing, and Handling (SA/SPaH, pronounced “saw-spaw”) system (Figure 5.1). SA/SPaH includes the robotic arm and turret, the drill, and the sample scooping/sieving/portioning apparatus called Collection and Handling for In situ Martian Rock Analysis (CHIMRA, pronounced “chimera”). Also included in SA/SPaH are the Dust Removal Tool (DRT, but usually just called the “brush”), a variety of immobile hardware bolted to the front of the rover that supports sampling and drilling activities called the “sample playground,” and motorized inlet covers and spring-loaded wind guards for the SAM and CheMin instruments.
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Notes
- 1.
The arm is described in detail in Billing and Fleischner (2011)
- 2.
Use of the arm for sample collection is described in Anderson et al (2012)
- 3.
Kuhn (2013)
- 4.
The drill is described in detail in Okon (2010)
- 5.
Supplementary material to Grotzinger et al (2014)
- 6.
Limonadi D (2012b)
- 7.
Ashwin Vasavada, personal communication, email dated February 9, 2017
- 8.
JPL (2014) Lesson Learned: Recognize that Mechanism Wear Products May Affect Science Results http://llis.nasa.gov/lesson/10801. Article dated June 8, 2014, accessed October 14, 2015
- 9.
Manning and Simon (2014)
- 10.
James Erickson, interview dated April 10, 2015
- 11.
Ashwin Vasavada, interview dated May 1, 2015
- 12.
Steve Lee, interview dated September 1, 2017
- 13.
The main published source for information on CHIMRA is Sunshine (2010). Cambria Hanson and Louise Jandura explained its intricacies and some last-minute design changes to me in great detail in an interview on June 3, 2016
- 14.
Steven Kuhn, personal communication, email dated August 14, 2015
- 15.
Vandi Verma, personal communication, email dated April 1, 2017
- 16.
Dan Limonadi, personal communication, email dated February 2, 2013
- 17.
Ashwin Vasavada, personal communication, email dated November 17, 2017
- 18.
There is no published paper about the DRT hardware. Information in this section comes from a paper mentioning the DRT software by Kim (2013) and personal communication with Ashwin Vasavada (email dated February 9, 2017).
- 19.
Conrad et al (2012)
- 20.
Anderson et al (2012)
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Lakdawalla, E. (2018). SA/SPaH: Sample Acquisition, Processing, and Handling. In: The Design and Engineering of Curiosity. Springer Praxis Books(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68146-7_5
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