NASA's Perseverance Mars rover runs into puzzling sampling conundrum

NASA's Perseverance Mars rover has stumbled into an issue during its first sampling attempt. "#SamplingMars is one of my most complicated tasks. Early pics and data show a successful drill hole, but no sample in the tube–something we've never seen in testing on Earth," the rover's Twitter account announced on Friday. In a release from the agency, the Southern California-based Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) which leads the mission wrote that data sent back to Earth after Perseverance's first rock sampling attempt indicated "no rock was collected." The 2,260-pound rover carries 43 titanium sample tubes in its mission to search for interesting rocks and sediment – potentially leading to signs of ancient microbial life on the red planet – and is exploring Jezero Crater: the region where it first landed in February. "While this is not the'hole-in-one' we hoped for, there is always risk with breaking new ground," Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C., said in a statement.