Perseverance’s Missing Mars Rock Sample Appears to Have Crumbled Away

The Perseverance rover could have hit its first main hiccup on Mars, as final week’s try at sampling Martian rock turned up a perplexing quantity of nothing. Yesterday, mission staff members at NASA reported that the rover’s techniques functioned completely—the issue as an alternative lies with the composition of the Martian floor.

Louise Jandura, the chief engineer for sampling and caching at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, unpacked the difficulty in a blog post. “The volume measurement and post-measurement image arrived indicating that the sample tube was empty. It took a few minutes for this reality to sink in but the team quickly transitioned to investigation mode,” she wrote.

The staff spent two days analyzing data from the rover, together with telemetry knowledge from the rover’s corer, which is designed to extract Martian rock samples which can be supposed to be introduced to Earth across the 2030s. They additionally checked out pictures of the coring web site, contained in the pattern tube, and even the trail the rover took because the coring occurred, in a traditional case of where-were-you-when-you-last-saw-it. Perhaps most significantly, the staff took depth measurements of the borehole utilizing pictures taken by the WATSON digicam on the rover, which indicated there was extra rock within the gap than the staff would anticipate if the coring had been successful.

Their basic conclusion is that what was presupposed to be a pattern of Martian rock, destined for Earth, is as an alternative a pulverized bunch of mud and crumbles sitting within the borehole and within the cuttings pile that encircles it. Tright here’s not sufficient rock within the pattern tube, and there’s an excessive amount of would-be pattern on the Martian floor.

Jandura wrote that the staff believes the rock’s materials properties made it tough (learn: not possible) to extricate, and the staff expects that complete swath of rock is analogous. “The hardware performed as commanded but the rock did not cooperate this time,” Jandura stated. The un-success has shades of NASA’s episode with the failed Mole aboard the Mars InSight lander, which wasn’t in a position to dig as a consequence of an surprising quantity of compact sediment known as duricrust. The Mole mission was abandoned in January after engineers tried valiantly to get it working.

Hope isn’t but misplaced for Perseverance’s efforts, although. The rover is heading over to the following deliberate sampling location and the farthest-yet level in its science marketing campaign, the south finish of the Martian Séítah. The Séítah is a rugged sequence of dunes beforehand scouted by the Ingenuity helicopter. Jandura famous that, based mostly on imaging of the area, the staff expects to come across sedimentary Martian rock extra just like the rocks the staff examined Perseverance’s gear. That sampling try will possible happen in early September.

Here’s What’s Next for NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover