NASAs Perseverance rover continues collecting Martian rocks.The car-sized robotic simply snagged its 4th Red Planet rock sample, drilling another core from an appealing stone that it initially sampled a little over a week earlier.” A rock so nice, I sampled it twice! Just topped and sealed my 5th sample tube, with another piece from this fascinating rock. Im doubling up on samples at some high-priority targets like this one,” Perseverance rover employee wrote Wednesday (Nov. 24) by means of the objectives main Twitter account, publishing two pictures of the sampling operation as well.Related: Where to find the newest Mars photos from NASAs Perseverance roverPerseverance collected 2 samples from the same Martian rock in November 2021. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech) Perseverance landed in February on the flooring of Mars Jezero Crater, which hosted a big lake and a river delta billions of years earlier. The rover is searching for signs of ancient Mars life and gathering lots of samples, which a joint NASA-European Space Agency campaign will haul to Earth, maybe as early as 2031. Perseverance has actually sealed 5 sample tubes to date, as the above tweet notes. One of those tubes is empty: The first rock the robot attempted to sample, back in August, showed to be remarkably soft, falling apart to bits that didnt make it into the designated titanium tube.The freshly gathered sample comes from the exact same rock that Perseverance drilled on Nov. 15. That stone is abundant in the greenish mineral olivine, a magnesium iron silicate that comprises the majority of Earths upper mantle. ” There are numerous concepts among my science group about how it arrived. Hypotheses are flying! Science guidelines,” the Perseverance group tweeted on Nov. 16, when it announced the successful collection of sample number three. Perseverance may be millions of miles from its house world, but its not alone. The rover landed with a small robotic partner, a 4-pound (1.8 kgs) helicopter named Ingenuity, which has demonstrated that aerial exploration is possible on Mars.Ingenuity is now carrying out hunting work for Perseverance. The little chopper has actually racked up 16 Red Planet flights to date, the most recent of which happened on Sunday (Nov. 21). Mike Wall is the author of “Out There” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; shown by Karl Tate), a book about the look for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or on Facebook..
NASAs Perseverance rover continues gathering Martian rocks.The car-sized robot just snagged its fourth Red Planet rock sample, drilling another core from an intriguing stone that it first sampled a little over a week ago. Im doubling up on samples at some high-priority targets like this one,” Perseverance rover team members wrote Wednesday (Nov. 24) via the objectives official Twitter account, publishing two images of the sampling operation as well.Related: Where to find the most current Mars photos from NASAs Perseverance roverPerseverance collected 2 samples from the same Martian rock in November 2021. One of those tubes is empty: The very first rock the robotic tried to sample, back in August, proved to be remarkably soft, falling apart to bits that didnt make it into the designated titanium tube.The recently collected sample comes from the exact same rock that Perseverance drilled on Nov. 15.
