NASA's Perseverance Rover reached a new milestone last week in its search for extraterrestrial intelligence. It drilled into Mars to find a rock plug, which was then sent back to Earth to be studied by scientists. NASA scientists received data early August 6. It indicated that the robot had successfully drilled into Mars. A photo showed even a dust heap around the borehole.In a blog post yesterday, Louise Jandura wrote that what followed was a rollercoaster ride of emotions. Although data suggested that Perseverance had placed a tube of sample into its stomach for storage, the tube was actually empty. Jandura said that while it took some time for the reality to sink in, the team quickly switched to investigation mode. It is what we do. It is the foundation of science and engineering.The team now has some clues about what went wrong in the case of the missing center, as Katie Stack Morgan, Mars 2020 deputy project scientist, describes it.She says that although we've demonstrated sample caching, the tube has no core. It is impossible that all these steps have been completed perfectly and with no problems, but the tube has no core.One theory was that the core sample had been dropped by the rover. There were no broken pieces. Stack Morgan also stated that the tube was clean and not dusty. This suggests that perhaps there was nothing that could have gotten in the tube.NASA scientists believe that the core was actually pulverized during drilling, and then scattered around borehole. Stack Morgan says that this would explain why there are no pieces in the hole or ground. They have basically become part the cutting. We began to wonder why this happened because it is not something that engineers observed in their extensive test set of rocks they had cored before launch.Perseverance is drilling at Jezero Crater. This crater used to hold a lake and may have been home for ancient microbial life. It relies on Ingenuity, a Mars helicopter, to find the best places to dig. The rover will give vital clues to the geological history and culture of Mars by digging beneath the rock, rather than just sampling the dust. Curiosity, the 2012 Mars rover, also drilled. However, it was built to grind rock rather than extract cores. NASA engineers need samples to observe the rock as it is laid so that they can examine it for signs of lifesome microbes.Perseverance's drilling process begins within the rover in the section known as the adaptive caching assembly. A robotic arm removes a tube from storage and inserts it in the bit carousel. This is a storage area for all Perseverance's coring bits. The tube is then presented to the 7-foot-long drill arm by rotating the carousel. It's roughly the same size and shape as a laboratory tube. Jessica Samuels, Perseverance's surface mission manager, told us that the coring bit has the tube inside. This was before the first drilling attempt. Now we are ready to actually obtain the sample.
