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Comment by mseepgood | Hacker News Reader

For those that don't click on the image, there is a hole in the rover where a screw would normally be found. Does anyone here know if this is intentional?

Looks like the screw is on the ground in the bottom of the picture. Circled in the original of this comment thread.

The ChemCam image (see links below) shows that it's not a screw.

It looks like someone forgot the locktite. The rover must have experienced lots of vibration on its long voyage, anything that wasn't secured properly could have vibrated loose.

Vibration is a pretty weird thing, the forces can be enormous with very little visible effect until something suddenly breaks or pops loose.

When I worked in satellite design we never used loctite because of outgassing. Washer thickness and diameter as well as torque was calculated for every screw and bolt. At the assembly at least two people were involved, one would use a digital precision torque wrench to apply the calculated nominal torque, another one would document the applied torque besides part number, date, time, etc. in a report. Assembly in aerospace is a bureaucratic process.

Happened to a Soviet lander on Venus in 1982:

"The quartz camera windows were covered by lens caps which popped off after descent. Venera 14, however, ended up measuring the compressibility of the lens cap, which landed right where the probe was to measure the soil."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venera_14#Landing

The question is, did Curiosity remember to pack a screwdriver?

This is one of the things I remember reading recently that got me really excited about 3D printing. Along with all the cool uses for consumers, it could be revolutionary for space travel. For instance, if a screw(/driver) was missing in space, they could in theory "just print one out."

It looks like it is nominal (have to use that word when dealing with space, right?). See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4633120

It seems to be intentional. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjEgTuCFLU4&t=0m37s (if it's the same hole as in that video, I'm so bad with moving objects in my head to different angles)

(Edit, fixed a typo)

Nice find! I watches the video and I believe you are correct.

Tangent, but what a misleading use of those stupid Facebook and Google+ buttons. For a moment I was asking myself how your upload could have amassed so much attention so fast.

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