NASA intrigued by Rover’s failure to collect Martian rock

(News)
– The Perseverance Mars rover’s first effort to collect a rock sample was unsuccessful, but NASA scientists plan to persevere. The rover, which landed in Jezero Crater in February, attempted to take a core and seal it in a titanium tube, but the mission team were surprised to find the tube was empty after the end of the sampling operation, reports the BBC. The mission team claims that the core drill and hammer drill at the end of the rover’s 7-foot robotic arm performed as expected, as did the sampling system, suggesting that the rock itself could have been react unexpectedly, reports Engadget.

Perseverance project manager Jennifer Trosper said in a statement that there does not appear to be a hardware issue and that the team will analyze the data to determine why the tube was empty. “I’ve been on all of the rover’s missions to Mars since the start, and this planet is still teaching us what we don’t know about it,” she said. “One thing I have found is that it is not uncommon to have complications with complex activities for the first time.” Perseverance’s mission is to identify areas that may once have hosted microbial life and to search for possible evidence of ancient life on Mars. It will leave the rock sample tubes on the planet’s surface and if all goes according to plan, they will be collected by a European Space Agency rover in 2026 and return to Earth by 2031. (In February, he returned the very first audio and video from Mars.)