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ANP Productions | Source: ANP
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The Mars explorer Perseverance rover has taken a second sample of Mars rock and conducted an initial analysis of the catch, the US space agency NASA said Friday. The samples are “probably volcanic with hints of salts that may contain stale water,” NASA tweeted.
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By Monday, Perseverance had already got hold of the first sample of Mars rock, called Montdenier. Two days later, the second sample was taken from the same rock, it was announced on Saturday. The second sample has been given the name Montagnac and, like Montdenier, will be kept in a special container tube.
The American space agency wants to use Perseverance to find evidence that microbes have lived on the red planet. The six-wheeled Mars explorer landed in a crater on the planet at the end of February, after an eight-year development program that cost about 2.12 billion euros. His working area is the crater Jezero where billions of years ago, when water would have flowed on Mars, a river may have flowed into a lake. The scout is equipped with more than twenty cameras and a drill.
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