NASA’s Perseverance rover has had a fascinating life on Mars since its landing in 2021, but now NASA is reporting its first major hardware issue. A malfunction in the robot’s rock-scanning laser could limit the data it collects if the team is unable to properly operate the tiny engine millions of kilometers away. This could complicate the rover’s mission to detect signs of life on Mars.

SHERLOC (Screening of Habitable Environments by Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals) uses a laser to vaporize small areas of rock, allowing analysis of their composition using cameras and spectrophotometers. During its three years on the red planet, SHERLOC destroyed 34 stone targets, creating 261 hyperspectral maps of its targets. Since the optics of the device are very sensitive, it has a pair of dust covers that can be opened and closed when necessary. Earlier this week, NASA announced that SHERLOC had encountered a problem, but that the problem wasn’t the device itself. NASA says SHERLOC is fine, but one of the two dust covers has stopped responding.

On January 6, the team determined that the problematic cover was oriented in a way that caused some of SHERLOC’s operating modes to fail. SHERLOC sits at the end of the rover’s robotic arm (see above), allowing it to get close to samples to avoid interference with its sensitive Raman spectrometer. While the cover is open, SHERLOC cannot fire its laser or collect spectroscopy data.

An engineering team was assigned to investigate the problem in the hope that SHERLOC could be returned to operating order. The team is currently trying to better understand the nature of the problem by varying the power supplied to the flap motor. Remaining the cap on may limit the effectiveness of SHERLOC. Although it cannot use the laser or spectrometer in this case, it can take microscopic images with the device’s WATSON camera looking through another hole.

Even if NASA can’t fix this glitch, that doesn’t mean Perseverance will move a finger on Mars. The rover’s engineering team designed a suite of seven instruments with some redundancy. In addition to SHERLOC, it has PIXL (a planetary instrument for X-ray lithochemistry) and SuperCam. Both of these devices can perform spectroscopy independently of SHERLOC.

Perseverance is based on the Curiosity rover, which has been orbiting Mars for more than a decade. There is every reason to expect that his successor will work for many years. Still, more problems are bound to arise, such as a stuck dust cover, as the rover struggles with the harsh conditions on the Red Planet.