This image was taken by one of the hazard cameras aboard NASAs Perseverance Rover on Aug. 6, 2021. It shows the hole that was drilled in what NASAs Perseverance team refers to as a paver rock, in preparation for the mission's first attempt at collecting a sample from Mars.The Perseverance Rover's first attempt at sample-snagging didn't go as planned.Perseverance, a car-sized robot, arrived in the Red Planet's Jezero Crater in February. It had two main missions: to search for signs of Mars life and to cache future samples.NASA's rover made its first sample-collecting hole Friday, Aug. 6, which was a significant milestone in the $2.7 billion mission. NASA officials announced Friday afternoon that data teleported back to Earth by Perseverance indicated that no Mars dirt or rock made it into the sampling tube."While this isn't the 'hole' we expected, there's always risk in breaking new ground," Thomas Zurbuchen (associate administrator, NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington) stated in a statement. (Perseverance's Mars sample-return mission is the first step, something that has never been done before.Zurbuchen said, "I am confident that we have the right team to work this, and I will persevere towards a solution for future success."Related: Where can I find the most recent Mars photos taken by NASA's Perseverance Rover?These words suggest that this was not a crucial moment for Perseverance. The rover has 43 sampling tubes. Perseverance is required to fill at most 20 of these tubes with material from holes it dug into Martian rock using the percussive drill attached at the end its robotic arm (7 feet (2.1 meters)).Perseverance data indicates that the drill's hollow coring bit worked as expected and that the processing of the sample tube was normal, NASA officials stated.Jessica Samuels, NASA's Perseverance surface mission manager, stated in the same statement that "The sampling process was autonomous from beginning to ending." After placing the probe in the tube, it is necessary to measure the volume. The probe didn't encounter the expected resistance if there was a sample inside the tube.The Perseverance team stated via Twitter that the hole was successfully drilled but that no empty tube was found during testing of the Earth sampling system.The empty tube could be due to the rock target reacting differently during coring and less likely to be a hardware problem with the Sampling & Caching System," Jennifer Trosper, Perseverance project manager at JPL stated in the same statement. "The team will spend more time analysing the data and also collecting additional diagnostic data to help understand the root cause of the empty tube over the next few days."NASA officials stated that Perseverance will also take detailed photos of the borehole using the WATSON (Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and Engineering), camera at the end.There are some examples of unexpected dirt or rock properties posing roadblocks for Mars robots. For example, Curiosity, the older cousin of Perseverance, has drilled into rocks which proved to be much harder or more brittle that mission team members anticipated. The NASA InSight Mars lander's heat probe for digging into the ground failed to reach as deep as it was intended. Perhaps this was due to strangely cohesive, yet dusty dirt.Trosper stated, "I have been on every Mars Rover mission since its inception. This planet is always teaching me what I don't know." "It's not uncommon to have complications when performing complex, first-time activities. That's one thing that I've learned."Mike Wall is the author and illustrator of "Out There" by Grand Central Publishing (2018). This book, which Karl Tate illustrated, is about the search for alien life. Follow him @michaeldwall. Follow us on Facebook @Spacedotcom and Twitter @michaeldwall
