Everything was in place for NASA's Perseverance rover to collect its first sample of Mars rock — but unfortunately, it looks like something's gone wrong yet again. Launched in July 2020 and landing on Mars this past February, Perseverance is on a mission to learn as much about the Red Planet as it possibly can. It's traversing the mysterious surface, analyzing its geology, and looking for possible signs of ancient life.
One of the many things Perseverance is tasked with is collecting samples of Martian rock and returning them to Earth. It's an extremely ambitious goal for NASA. If Perseverance is successful with this, it'll mark the first time rocks from another planet have been collected with the intent of being returned home to Earth. Unfortunately, achieving that goal has been met with some roadblocks. Perseverance was supposed to collect its first sample back in August, but due to technical issues, that attempt failed. Perseverance drilled a new hole into a rock on September 2 for its second attempt. The rock appeared to be a good specimen, Perseverance was ready to collect samples from it, and everything was going according to plan.
The key phrasing there is that it was. A few hours after NASA shared a photo of the rock Perseverance was collecting its sample from, the Perseverance Twitter account shared another #SamplingMars update. In a Tweet published at 7:01 PM ET on September 2, the Perseverance account says, "First images show a sample in the tube after coring. But pics I took after an arm move are inconclusive due to poor lighting. I’m taking more photos in better light to confirm that we still have an intact core in the tube."
Looking at the two photos above, the one on the left clearly shows a piece of rock inside the tube. In the second photo, however, it appears to be missing. NASA believes this is a result of poor lighting conditions in the second picture. However, comparing the images side-by-side, the difference in light doesn't look that substantial to result in such different photos. As one Twitter sleuth explains responding to Perseverance's Tweet, "Exposure looks exactly the same, the components of the arm in shadow remain visible in both images. No way it went from well exposed sample to a black void. It's gone."
As for how the sample went from clearly visible to completely missing, there does appear to be a possible explanation. After Perseverance took the first image, NASA explains that it performed a "percuss to ingest" procedure. This "vibrates the drill bit and tube for one second, five separate times" and aims to clear any unwanted debris from the lip of the sample tube. With this movement, it's possible the sample just slid further down into the tube and isn't as easy to see. The other possibility is that this movement caused the sample to fall out of the tube. NASA's betting that didn't happen, but it's taking the extra time to study the photos and make sure the sample is still there.
Commenting on this, project manager at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Jennifer Trosper, says, "The project got its first cored rock under its belt, and that’s a phenomenal accomplishment. The team determined a location, and selected and cored a viable and scientifically valuable rock. We did what we came to do. We will work through this small hiccup with the lighting conditions in the images and remain encouraged that there is sample in this tube." NASA has yet to comment any further on the missing rock, but here's to hoping it really is there and wasn't another failed attempt.
from ScreenRant - Feed https://ift.tt/38GKRxf
0 Comments