NASA Perseverance Mars Rover's Collected Rock Sample Mysteriously Disappeared, Here's What Happened

NASA has spent over $2 billion over nine years drilling and storing Martian rock samples. The Perseverance rover was on the verge of doing this on Friday.

The rover chose a boulder in an old Martian lake bed that might have previously been home to extraterrestrial life and attempted to drill into it. However, something odd happened: the sample just disappeared.

In a news statement, NASA associate administrator Thomas Zurbuchen stated that forging new ground is always risky. He assured the space agency that the proper people are working on the problem.

Rock Mysteriously Disappeared

NASA said per Science Times that Perseverance should be collecting a rock sample on Mars. It is the first of 35 that needs to be kept for retrieval and return to Earth in the future.

The sample should have come out of a small hole in the rock, but the rover's sample-collection tube is empty. The rock core is not even close to the hole. It is simply not there.

This image is incredible.

It's a close up of the core hole from @NASAPersevere's first sampling attempt.

Except there's been no sign of the sample. It's not in the hole, and it's not in the sample container.

A new Martian mystery ensues... pic.twitter.com/wrnfGNPCFi
— Paul Byrne (@ThePlanetaryGuy) August 8, 2021

Suppose the rock samples make it to Earth safely, experts will almost certainly give a wealth of information on Mars. This will include data on the planet's geology from a distance that scientists could only dream of. According to Zurbuchen, the squad will arrive in the early 2030s.

ALSO READ: NASA's Mars Ingenuity Rover About To Drill Rock As Ingenuity Helicopter Notches 11th Flight

In a blog post on NASA, Louise Jandura, the chief engineer for sampling and caching at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, noted that they had been thinking about and planning for this day for almost eight years. Perseverance's sophisticated robotic technology, she added, was the result of a long, stressful, challenging, and exhilarating journey.

Is It the Rock's Fault? Probably!

IFLScience said that NASA requested Perseverance to take close-up images of the borehole to find out what transpired. After that, mission controllers will attempt to arrange a new sampling effort.

Experts believe, per the same IFLScience report, that the fault is not in the system but in the rock. It would not be the first time that Martian rocks and dirt defied expectations. A recent example of this is NASA's InSight Lander's eventual failed deployment of the beleaguered Martian "Mole."

JPL's Perseverance project manager Jennifer Trosper said in the same NASA news statement that the tube problem is more likely due to the target not responding as predicted during coring, rather than a technical fault with the Sampling and Caching System. Trosper said that the team would spend more time examining the data they already have and obtaining new diagnostic data to help them figure out what is causing the empty tube.

The primary aim of Perseverance's mission on Mars is to investigate Jezero Crater and collect rock samples. The tube that came out empty is one of the 43 that the rover is carrying for this reason. In approximately a decade, NASA aims to send another mission to Mars to recover the samples and return them to Earth.

Scientists can then see if there was any microbial life in the lake that formerly filled the basin. In other words, Perseverance's capacity to drill effectively is critical to a lot of preparation and effort.