NASA’s latest Mars rover might have efficiently collected its first rock pattern for return to Earth, after final month’s try got here up empty. The Perseverance rover’s chief engineer, Adam Steltzner, referred to as it an ideal core pattern.
We have a pattern! I’ve by no means been extra completely satisfied to see a gap in a rock. #SamplingMars https://t.co/bVstYvkYdG
— Adam Steltzner (@steltzner) September 2, 2021
But NASA later stated it was awaiting extra photographs earlier than declaring success though the “team is confident that the sample is in the tube.”
A month in the past, Perseverance drilled into a lot softer rock, and the pattern crumbled and didn’t get within the titanium tube. The rover drove a half-mile to a greater spot to strive once more.
#SamplingMars replace: first pictures present a pattern within the tube after coring. But pics I took after an arm transfer are inconclusive on account of poor lighting. I’m taking extra photographs in higher gentle to verify that we nonetheless have an intact core within the tube.
Read extra: https://t.co/MqeD68KqYw pic.twitter.com/VYXErWrrEb
— NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover (@NASAPersevere) September 2, 2021
Initial photographs taken Wednesday present a pattern within the tube however later pictures had been inconclusive due to poor lighting, NASA stated in a information launch. The rock pattern — concerning the thickness of a pencil — may have slipped down deeper into the tube throughout a sequence of deliberate vibrations, it stated. More photographs are deliberate.
Perseverance arrived in February at Mars’ Jezero Crater — believed to be the house of a lush lakebed and river delta billions of years in the past — seeking rocks that may maintain proof of historical life. NASA plans to launch extra spacecraft to retrieve the samples collected by Perseverance; engineers are hoping to return as many as three dozen samples in a few decade.
