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NASA thinks it knows why the first Martian rock sample from Perserverance has gone missing.
As Salon previously reported, earlier this month scientists attempted to take samples from the Red Planet and drop them into one of the Perseverance rover’s 43 collection tubes. At first, everything seemed to be working fine: the rover drilled a small finger-sized hole in the rock, and the photos showed an obvious hole in said rock. But a follow-up scan found there was no rock sample in the tube.
What happened?
After analyzing the rover’s data and photos for several days, NASA’s Perseverance team determined that the rock had most likely collapsed into “small fragments.”
“It seems the rock was not strong enough to produce a core,” Louise Jandura, chief sampling system engineer, wrote in a NASA blog post on Wednesday. “The desired core material is probably in the bottom of the hole, in the spoil pile, or a combination of both.”
Listen to scary music.
“Scientific and engineering teams believe that the uniqueness of this rock and its material properties are the main contributors to the difficulty of extracting a core,” Jandura explained. “Therefore, we will be heading to the next sampling site at South Seitah, the furthest point from this phase of our science campaign.”
Perseverance first selected a boulder in Jezero Crater, a 45 km-wide impact crater and ancient lake that scientists say is a great place to look for evidence of ancient microbial life on Mars. But it turns out that this rock “didn’t cooperate this time,” Jandura said.
“It reminds me once again of the nature of exploration,” Jandura said. “A specific result is never guaranteed, no matter how hard you prepare. Despite this result, science and engineering have advanced.”
Perseverance is a sample return mission, which means Perseverance will collect and store Martian rock and soil samples, which will eventually be returned to Earth. Obviously, obtaining the sample is the key to this mission, which is why the scientists at NASA went through “a roller coaster of emotions”, according to Jandura, when the sample was not there. .
Sample return missions are extremely rare due to their cost; indeed, there has never been a mission to return a sample from another planet. While the Mars sample return mission has yet to be fully planned, NASA scientists say if all goes according to plan, we may have samples from Mars back to Earth by 2031.
Hopefully they can get a sample at South Seitah next time in September.
“Based on rover and helicopter imagery to date, we will likely encounter sedimentary rocks there that we believe will better align with our testing experience on Earth,” Jandura said.
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