Earlier this month, NASA tried to pierce and pack a sample of Martian surface material with its rover perseverance. Although everything seemed to go according to the plan, a further assessment revealed that the sample collection tube was empty. Now, nearly two weeks later, the spatial agency is back with new plans.
Perseverance will play an important role in a future mission that will involve the shipment of March samples on Earth. Before this can happen, perseverance must drill these samples and seal them in small titanium tubes that will be deposited on the Martian surface. At one point, a different mission will recover the cans and send them to the ground.
The first of these attempts to collect samples took place earlier this month but did not work as well as expected. The sample has not been successfully placed in the tube; NASA quickly realized that there was no basic sample, which means that the drilling effort probably caused the sample simply separated in the sand.
In this spirit, the space agency indicates that its perseverance team will move to search for a different paver stone to pierce, another, hopefully, to be more compatible with the integrated drilling and sampling system of Rover. NASA has already spied like “a very promising location” called citadel that can be a more ideal place to pierce basic samples.
Although a new specific drill target has not yet been selected, the space agency has stated in a blog article today that it plans to have a new destination of the sample in the coming days. If everything happens as expected, the next basic drill stress sample sample will occur in the next 10 days.
