Justin Simon, a NASA planetary scientist, was both excited and nervous as the Perseverance Rover drilled into a rock to collect a sample of Jezero Crater's Mars. The privilege of being the sample shepherd from millions of miles away has been given to Simon. But the pressures are on. He said that these samples will help us understand not only the geology of the site, but also the minerals likely to be related to the history and flow of water in the area.
First, however, the rover needed to capture a chunk in a container that was about the size of a test tube. In August, the first attempt was unsuccessful. The first rock, Roubion, was simply shredded by the drill as it bore into it. None of the bits made it to the container.
Simon can now exhale a sigh relief. Simon can now exhale with relief after his second attempt at extracting a Martian core from a different rock.
That image shows a stunning-looking core and a cylinder that has been broken apart cleanly. It is geologically very intriguing, and something scientists of tomorrow will love to work on, says Ken Farley of Caltech, a Caltech geochemist, and Perseverance project scientist, led by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena.
The analysis of the new sample will take some time because NASA scientists are unable to capture clear images due to low light conditions. This makes it difficult to interpret the images. Perseverance performed a percuss to-ingest procedure, shaking the sample to ensure that the tubes were not too full. This would cause the system to jam when it was stored. They are pretty certain they have the sample. However, they will try to take more images in better lighting over the next few days.
The first attempt at drilling, which basically pulverized this sample, was not a failure. It yielded evidence that the rock had been weathered and worn down by a river that ran into the lake crater billions years ago. It was possible that the lake formed from a transient event. Farley said this in an interview earlier this year.
The rock was too fine so the scientists piloted it to another area to search for different types of rock. They used the Ingenuity copter as a scouting tool. Persistance led them to the west where they found a boulder-like rock that was larger than expected. They named it Rochette and the rock seemed less likely to fall apart when the rover used its tools to explore it. It looks like something you would throw if it fell on the ground. Farley described it as a healthy, good-looking rock.
Perseverance takes photos of candidate rocks before each sampling attempt. It also did an abrasion test last weekend to determine if Rochette was sufficiently durable to be sampled. It is equipped with a rotary drill bit (with additional bits), that spins and hammers into rock. This tool is used to remove dust and chip away at the weathered outer layer. Farley said that the abrasion was extremely successful and they decided to grab a sample. Perseverance extended the robot arm 7 feet long, started the drill and extracted a core sample. It then rotated the arms hand to inspect the sample tube.
