NASA’s Perseverance Rover Grabs 1st Martian Rocks

These bits are the first from Mars that will eventually be brought back to Earth

The Perseverance rover drilled two finger-sized pieces of stone out of a Martian rock in early September (two drill holes pictured in the rock on the right). Scientists plan to eventually ferry these samples to Earth for further study.

The Perseverance rover has captured its first two slices of Mars.

NASA’s latest rover, it arrived on the Red Planet in February. On September 1, it drilled into a flat rock nicknamed Rochette.

That allowed the rover to fill a roughly finger-sized tube with stone. This sample is the first-ever intended to be brought to Earth for study.

On September 8, the rover snagged a second sample from the same rock. Both are now stored in airtight tubes inside the rover.

The rover is supposed to get two samples from every rock it drills. This is “a little bit of an insurance policy,” explains Katie Stack Morgan. It means the rover can drop identical sets of samples in two different places on Mars.

That boosts the chances that a future mission will be able to retrieve at least one set. Stack Morgan is the deputy project scientist for the Perseverance mission. She works at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, Calif.

The successful drilling is a comeback story for Perseverance. The rover’s first attempt to take a bit of Mars failed. The sample crumbled to dust, leaving an empty tube. Scientists think that rock was too soft to withstand the drill.

Nevertheless, the rover persevered.