After digging the robot into a board called the Rochette, a few days of excitement passed, They were afraid to drop the drilling pattern. However, new drill bit recordings show that The sample is there, safe, inside the hull.
NASA experts described this moment as historic because it was the first rock sample to be collected on an alien planet and was meant to be brought to Earth.
In the past month, Perseverance dug an unusually fine powdery layer of soil, and the sample either crumbled or splinters remained in the hole and fell off at the time of collection, so it can’t put anything in the collection tube in place afterwards. to ground.
Since then, he has made the approximately 800m walk to a better sampling location, where he has attempted to collect another sample.
The research program envisages collecting 31 rock samples. These are scheduled to return to Earth in a few years for analysis.
The aim of the research is to search for signs of ancient life, such as traces of fossilized microbes, in order to gain a better understanding of the geography of Mars.
The rally started from Florida a year ago. The urban SUV-sized rover landed on Mars in February, at Jezero Crater, which scientists say was a deep lake 3.5 billion years ago, with an environment that could have created conditions for extraterrestrial life.
Cover photo: Shutterstock
