NASA’s Curiosity Rover Gets Its Drill, Footage From the Arctic Seafloor and More Science News
What a week. Beloved environmentalist David Attenborough turned 100 on Friday, and scientists named a newly discovered species of wasp in his honour. The Chilean wasp, he called Attenboroughnculus tau, it’s not the first to be named after Attenborough – it joins a list of over 50 organisms that bear his name in one way or another, which seems right. Also this week, NASA shared an update about its Curiosity rover, which encountered some problems during a sampling attempt on Mars, and the agency released a new set of images from the Artemis II mission.
Read on to learn more about those and other science stories we found interesting this week.
Curiosity gets into trouble
NASA’s Curiosity rover found itself in trouble recently after drilling into some Martian rock that appeared to be unexpectedly sticky. In an incident captured by Curiosity’s cameras on April 29, the rover can be seen with a rock attached to the drill after attempting to collect a sample. The stone, called Atacama, was about 1.5 meters in diameter and weighed 30 kilograms, according to NASA. Somehow in the 14 years the rover has been exploring Mars, this has never happened before, and vibrating the rock shaker didn’t work at first.
“When the rover retracted its arm, the entire rock lifted off the ground, suspended by a fixed sleeve around the rotating drill,” NASA explained in a blog post. “Drilling has fractured or separated the upper layers of rock in the past, but the rock has never remained attached to the drill sleeve.” After several more attempts over the next few days, the team was able to free the rock by “tilting the drill more, rotating and vibrating the drill, and rotating the drill bit.” We can see the rock finally leaving Curiosity and breaking apart in images taken on May 1.
Curiosity has taken dozens of samples from the surface of Mars by drilling into the rock, as shown in this image from 2024 (trypophobia alert). After drilling, the rover collects powdered rock and analyzes it with its Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) and Chemistry & Mineralogy (CheMin) instruments to determine composition. Now that its brief error has been resolved, it can get back to work.
What is happening at the bottom of the Arctic fjord
The Arctic seafloor isn’t exactly an easy place to see, but thanks to a long-term research project at Inglefield Bredning in northwest Greenland, we’ve gotten a glimpse of what life is like in the depths of the earth. As part of this effort, researchers are deploying a video camera and hydrophone 260 meters deep in the fjord for a week in August 2025 to survey the sea floor and biodiversity. Their findings were recently published in the journal One PLOSand some amazing photos and videos (don’t be alarmed by the scary color, that’s because of the red light they use underwater).
The team recorded a total of 478 different organisms, including comb jellies, arrowworms, snailfish and shrimp. In one clip, a snailfish can be seen riding the current backwards, which the researchers noted was “strange.” Check out the highlights here.
The instruments also heard the sounds of nearby narwhals, which were present every day of the survey except one, as well as the sounds of glaciers cracking and melting and the sound of boat engines. The images also show tons of what’s known as “sea ice,” or natural debris such as sewage and dead plant and animal matter. It’s hard to imagine, but many sea creatures rely on this high water output.
Based on the success of their observations, the researchers said that their method could be a possible way to study these deep areas of the Arctic. “Until now, there have been few direct underwater observations in the Arctic in environmental studies,” the authors wrote. “With video setups becoming more accessible, more studies could be beneficial in filling this knowledge gap.” Compact, portable moorings with video recorders could be “an important tool for exploring the Arctic seabed,” they note.
Feast your eyes on 12,000+ images from Artemis II
NASANASA this week released thousands of images taken during last month’s Artemis II mission to the moon. You can find them all here. In classic government website fashion, the UI is kind of confusing, but it’s worth clicking through the catalog if you have time on your hands. While their target was the moon, and there are many great pictures of the moon both up close and far, there are some really impressive pictures of Earth and the Milky Way in there as well.
