NASA’s Perseverance Rover Drilled the Rocks It Came For
DannyB writes:
On Mars, NASA's Perseverance Rover Drilled the Rocks It Came For
After a perplexing failure last month, NASA's latest Mars rover, Perseverance, was able to successfully collect a sample of rock on Wednesday. The rover took pictures of the rock in the tube and sent the images to Earth so that mission managers could be sure they had not come up empty again. The rock was there.
Adam Steltzner, the chief engineer for the rover, enthused on Twitter on Thursday morning, describing it as one beautifully perfect cored sample."
Now that is one beautifully perfect cored sample, if I do say so myself! Be patient, little sample, your journey is about to begin. #SamplingMarshttps://t.co/jOtNGKjeAe
- Adam Steltzner (@steltzner) September 2, 2021
[...] Late in the day on Thursday, NASA said in a news release that the mission team remained confident the rock was still in the collection tube, hidden in shadows. It would be surprising if the shaking could have caused the rock to jump up and out of the tube. But NASA said the rover would take more pictures when the lighting was better before sealing the tube and putting it away in its belly.
BBC: Perseverance: Nasa's Mars rover makes second drill sample bid
The rover is tasked with gathering more than two dozen cores over the next year or so that will be fetched home by a joint US and European effort later this decade.
[....] The deep, 45km-wide depression, some 20 degrees north of the planet's equator, looks to have held a lake billions of years ago.
Because of this, scientists think Jezero's sediments may hold traces of ancient microbial life - assuming biology ever took hold on Mars.
Now scientists have to wait and see which happens first: return of rock samples to Earth, or SLS launch.
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