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This borehole was supposed to give the Perseverance rover its first rock sample.
NASA / JPL-Caltech
This story is part of Welcome to mars, our series exploring the red planet.
Rocks don’t just disappear into the air. NASA has been questioning a Martian mystery since its The Perseverance rover attempted to collect its very first rock sample Last week. When the rover checked the sample inside the collection tube, it found nothing. It turns out that the rock itself could be to blame.
The rover pierced a promising rock in Jezero Crater, an ancient lake bed. The sampling process appeared to work as expected. This was to be the first piece of rock stored by the rover during a return to Earth by a future mission.
NASA evaluated the data and took a closer look at the drill site to determine what happened and why the sample tube ended up empty. “It appears the rock was not strong enough to produce a core,” Louise Jandura, chief sampling and caching engineer, said in a statement Wednesday.
A composite image shows the borehole where the Perseverance rover was attempting to take its first sample to be stored in a tube. The drill hole is just over 1 inch in diameter.
NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS
The images show powdery rock around the borehole, suggesting the rock has simply crumbled. “The desired core material is probably in the bottom of the hole, in the spoil pile, or a combination of the two,” Jandura said.
Perseverance is equipped with 43 sample tubes, so losing a stone is no big deal to the mission. The rover is on its way to another sampling location where it will try again. The team expects to find a more sample friendly rock to collect.
The good news is that Perseverance’s sampling process seems to be working very well. Uncooperative rock will not slow down the rover’s science roll.
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