I get that, but if lid could still be clamped shut, presumably any chips could be removed? I get it, now you have debris in a clean room but it seems like they could grind the screw heads away under a vacuum. I would assume that everything inside the cannister is behind some o-ring seal, still perfectly sealed away. Plus if they detect the screw material in the sample, they could overlook that (what are the odds of finding stainless steel or whatever alloy it is in deep space?).
I don't get a sense of time scale here, if they went to open it yesterday, found two stuck screws, then sat back and decided to call a team meeting about best path to proceed... lot of ado over nothing. It's not quite like finding a rusty bolt in the northeast, where 60 seconds later its torched off. Something like this, when some procedure does not go to plan, everything stops.
Makes me wonder what the implication here will be. Lessons learned. Most of NASA's stuff is one time use. Not sure how many missions have returned material like this. So what is the DFMEA going to be like, for review of future containers? no threaded retainers? must be easily fractured in one plane? Spring loaded clamps?
