NASA revealed on Monday that its Perseverance Mars rover had successfully collected its first rock sample. The space agency posted on Twitter photos of a rock core about the thickness of a pencil in a sample tube.
The sample was gathered on September 1, but NASA wasn't sure if the rover had successfully hung onto its valuable item at first because early photographs taken in low light were blurry.
The sample will be examined by scientists when it is returned to Earth by a future project.
The tube was then sent to the rover's interior where further measurements and photography took place. The sample was then stored in an airtight container after a photo was captured so that the space agency could validate its components.
Perseverance landed on the Jezero Crater, an ancient lake bed, in February on a mission to look for traces of ancient microbial life. Another mission agenda is a better grasp of the Red Planet's geology and past climate. The robot had failed to obtain a sample in its initial effort in August, because the rock was too brittle for drilling.
NASA hopes to return samples collected by the rover in the 2030s as part of a collaborative mission with the European Space Agency. When it reaches to its landing site, the initial stage of its science mission, which will take hundreds of sols or Martian days, will be completed. It will have actually travelled between 2.5 kilometers and 5 kilometers by then, and eight of its 43 collection tubes are expected to be filled.
The achievement, according to Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for science, is relatively similar to the first samples of rock taken from the Moon, which are still beneficial for scientists today.
Its initial target was a small rock known as ‘Rochette.’ To extract samples, Perseverance employs a drill and a hollow drilling small piece at the end of its 7-foot-long (2-meter-long) robotic arm.
In a speech, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson remarked, “This is a momentous achievement and I can’t wait to see the incredible discoveries produced by Perseverance and our team.”
