NASA’s Perseverance rover may not have succeeded in its first attempt to collect a sample from the surface of Mars, but soon it will try again.
NASA’s Perseverance rover may not have succeeded in its first attempt to collect a sample from the surface of Mars, but soon it will try again, hopefully with a more cooperative rock this time. Perseverance made its first sampling attempt on Friday, August 6, and at first, everything seemed to go as planned. However, when the rover went to measure the rock in its sample tube, it found nothing inside. The rover team got to work figuring out why the rover had failed to collect a sample, and preliminary investigations suggested that the problem was with the type of rock they were trying to sample. Now, further investigation confirms that this was indeed the problem, as the rock was too powdery to produce a neat core that could be sealed away.
