Key Sentence:
- The US space agency’s Perseverance rover appears to have taken rock samples from Mars on its second attempt.
- Robot drill bits drill neat holes in thick plates called Rochettes.
Images from Thursday show that the rock core NASA’s Dependable was taken. In an earlier experiment last month, the sample was crushed to a powder. If sustainability is successful this time, it will be the first piece of rock set on another planet to return to Earth. The rover is slated to assemble more than two dozen cores next year or so, which will be brought home later this decade through a joint effort by the United States and Europe.
NASA expected more images of Mars before declaring the Coloring exercise a definitive success, but confidence is high.
“NASA’s Dependable still have to take some better lighting shots to be sure,” Rover chief engineer Adam Stelzner wrote on Twitter and added: “Everything is fine. I am fine. We are all fine!”
The depression 45 kilometers deep, about 20 degrees north of the planet’s equator, appears to have contained lakes billions of years ago. Therefore, scientists believe that the Jezero sediments could contain traces of ancient microbial life – assuming biology once conquered Mars.
The robot has traveled more than 2 km to a slightly higher ridge dubbed the Citadel from its landing site. Here the Perseverance team chose Rochette as the target of the last practice trial. The inscription on the image … but looking at the nuclear warhead, Rochette seems to have produced a rock sample.
The correction mechanism crushes the rock into dust, which then falls back to the ground around the borehole.
But the mission team was encouraged by the first photos of Perseverance downloaded Thursday, which show Rochette rocky material in the core head at the cylinder entrance. Other images need to confirm this.
Rover then had to process the sample entirely in his stomach. However, persistence continues to be overshadowed by his Ingenuity mini helicopter. Originally brought to Mars as a technology demonstration, drones are now routinely used to explore the terrain in front of the rover. Ingenuity creates a total of 12 fields.