On August 6, Mars Perseverance attempted to collect a sample of a really cool-looking rock. It held out its sample container, it drilled, it looked in its sample container, and it discovered it had picked up nothing.

Nothing.

As the primary mission of Percy is to collect samples of rock, this empty sample container was not good news. For several days, NASA engineers looked at the data, looked at the failed sample, and looked at the telemetry. And on August 11, they shared that, while the rover had done everything right, it turns out the rock was more like sand and when trying to drill out a solid sample that will slide politely into a sample tube, sand is not what you want to dig in. It appears that the drill nicely made a hole in the not-very-rocky rock, and the material just crumbled down the rock face instead of into the sample container. Rather than try again, the rover is going to simply move along. According to mission project manager Jennifer Trosper: We are going to step back and do something we are more confident of.

The rover is now heading toward some nice normal sedimentary rock like we have on Earth and like it practiced on.

More Information

Why NASA’s Mars rover failed to collect its first rock core (Nature)