NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover Fails to Get Rock in First Attempt

NASA has bad news for you. Perseverance's caching mechanism, the agency stated on Friday, does not appear to be storing a rock sample after all. Though the rover's first data showed that a sample had been processed, it seems that a probe assigned with monitoring the specimen in the tube did not come into contact with the pressure that would be there if a sample had been present.

While this isn't the "hole-in-one" the agency hoped for, Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, noted in a blog post on NASA that forging new ground always carries risk. On the other hand, he assured them they have the proper people on the job and that they would keep working until they find a solution that will assure future success.

NASA to Investigate What Happened

NASA is still looking into the incident, and an explanation may not come for a couple of days. Jennifer Trosper, Perseverance project manager, said per Engadget that the team thought the rock responded unanticipatedly during the coring process. In other words, the device is most likely in good working order.

The Martian surface has caused issues on several occasions. In 2008, the Phoenix Lander had trouble obtaining "sticky" dirt, and Curiosity and InSight have also had difficulty breaking through rocks and the surface itself.

This setback will not jeopardize perseverance's purpose. NASA, on the other hand, will prefer to reduce such accidents. The rover was dispatched to Mars to gather samples that would ultimately be returned to Earth and aid scientists in their search for traces of previous life. The fewer samples NASA receives, the fewer opportunities it will have to investigate Mars' past.

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Perseverance Expected to Gather Rock Samples

Perseverance was supposed to gather a rock sample on Mars, according to NASA. It's the first of around 35 that will be saved for a future expedition to retrieve and return to Earth.

Suppose the rock samples arrive safely on Earth, they will likely provide a wealth of knowledge about Mars, including data on the planet's geology, at a distance that scientists could only dream of. The squad is expected to arrive in the early 2030s, according to Zurbuchen.

Louise Jandura, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory's principal engineer for sampling and caching, said in a blog post on NASA that they had been thinking about and planning for this day for over eight years. She said, "It was a long, stressful, demanding, and thrilling path that led to Perseverance's advanced robotic technology."

How Perseverance Should Get The Sample From Mars

In a blog post, NASA described the processes required to retrieve the sample. The Earth team has chosen the sample site rough section of rock a little less than a mile from the landing site. The rover was then told to abrade the rock surface (scrape off the dirt) and drill into the stone, extracting a core and storing it.

NASA scientists were unsure if the rough is made up of igneous or sedimentary rocks at the time of the conference, which would need specific steps to form. According to scientists' initial glances at pictures of the rock captured by Perseverance's WATSON camera, the rocks appear to be igneous, according to Nature. Perseverance has securely placed the material in one of their test tubes.