CALIFORNIA, iNews.id – Earlier this month NASA trying to drill and packing a surface material sample Mars using the Perseverance rover. Although everything seemed to be according to plan, further evaluation revealed an empty sample collection tube.
Perseverance will play a big role in future missions that will involve sending Martian samples back to Earth. Before that happens, Perseverance will have to drill this sample and seal it in a tiny titanium tube that will be deposited on the Martian surface.
At some point in the future, a different mission will take the tube and send it to Earth. The first sampling attempt was made earlier this month but did not go as well as planned.
The sample was not successfully placed in the tube; NASA immediately learned there were no core samples, meaning drilling attempts might have caused the samples to simply break into sand, as quoted by Slash Gears.
With that in mind, the space agency said its Perseverance team will continue to look for different paver rocks to drill, which it hopes will be more compatible with the rover’s built-in drilling and sampling system.
Editor: Dini Listiyani
