NASA suspects successful sampling of Mars mission on second attempt

As announced by NASA on Thursday, the points were received the day before data He noted that drilling rocks on Mars was successful this time. However, the images of the maneuver are blurred due to poor lighting conditions. The best pictures expected by “Perseverance” on Saturday Earth Transfer.

Jennifer Trosper, NASA project manager, said she was confident that “a sample is in the tube.” The first attempt by Perseverance to collect samples from the Red Planet with the help of an exercise on its robotic arm at the beginning of August failed.

The goal of the Perseverance mission is to search for traces of ancient microbial life that may have been preserved in ancient sea sediments. Scientists also hope to gain a better understanding of the geological conditions on Mars. The plan is to collect about 30 samples over several years.

The ‘Persevere’ off-road rover nearly touched down at Jezero Crater on Mars in February. Scientists suspect that a deep lake existed there about 3.5 billion years ago, which emptied and refilled several times over time and provided suitable conditions for organic life.

However, it will be years before scientists can analyze the samples themselves: NASA is not planning a mission with the European Space Agency (ESA) to bring the samples to Earth to take it back. There they must be examined for their chemical and mineral composition in order to find out whether the rocks are of volcanic origin or whether they are sedimentary rocks.