The sample tube appears to have been successfully filled with precious Martian rock.
One of Perseverance’s main tasks on the Red Planet is to collect monsters. And now, in a second frantic attempt, he seems to have succeeded! The first data coming in suggests that the rover successfully drilled into a Martian rock and stuffed rock fragments into one of its sample tubes.
A few weeks ago, the Perseverance team suffered a major setback. The four-wheeled robot cart failed to take a sample of the Martian surface. Perseverance supplying rock from an area in Jezero Crater known as “Crater Floor Fractured Rough.” Unfortunately, that first sampling didn’t go quite according to plan. Data that Perseverance sent back to Earth showed that the sample tube it brought along remained empty. The rock Perseverance wanted to sample later turned out to be far too crumbly. The rock immediately disintegrated into powder and fine-grained dust, making it impossible to store it in the sample tube. And with that, the first Mars rover Perseverance sampling was sadly unsuccessful.–
Perseverance collected this prestigious monster on a nearby ridge that overlooks the bottom of Jezero Crater. The entire ridge is more than 900 meters long and contains impressive rock formations and boulders. Here the robber found an interesting stone called Rochette. Using a rapidly rotating drill at the end of its six-foot robotic arm, Perseverance drilled a hole in Rochette and attempted to take a sample just a little thicker than a pencil.
The Perseverance-drilled hole in Rochette stone. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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Images
The first images produced by Mastcam-Z show that an intact sample has indeed ended up in the intended sample tube.
The sample tube with contents. It can be seen that there is drilled rock in it. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS
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Still, with the failed first sampling attempt still fresh in their minds, the team doesn’t dare to celebrate too soon. Although additional images have been taken, they are unfortunately very unclear due to poor lighting conditions. And so there is no other option than to create new images.
New images
These new images will be acquired later today, when the sun is in a more favorable position. Photos will also be taken after sunset to ensure that there are not even bright spots on the images. While the researchers are pretty sure that rock has been collected this time, they’d rather err on the side of caution and wait for the final images before Perseverance officially seals the sample tube.
happy
The researchers are very pleased that everything so far indicates that the first Mars sample has been collected. “We’ve got the first rock in and that’s a phenomenal achievement,” exclaims team member Jennifer Trosper. “The team chose a good location and selected and drilled out a scientifically valuable rock. We did what we came for.”
Ultimately, the researchers hope to fill all the sample tubes brought with them – no less than 42 in total – with interesting samples from Mars. By then sending it back to Earth, scientists hope to answer a number of pressing scientific questions — including, of course, the one key question: Did life ever exist on Mars? Perseverance will prepare all hermetically sealed tubes so that they can be used during a future Sample Return Mission can be easily brought back to Earth.
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