NASA's Perseverance rover tries out new tech which lets it spit out piece of Mars rock

NASA's Perseverance rover has tried out a nifty new feature for the first time, which let it'spit out' a piece of Mars rock that had been clogging its sampling tube. The trick means that Perseverance can now continue taking samples of rock from the Red Planet to search for possible signs of ancient life. The SUV-sized vehicle has been on the Red Planet since February 2021, and is slowly trundling through the Jezero Crater taking rock samples for later retrieval. On December 29, while retrieving a sample from a rock, its sixth so far, NASA engineers found they couldn't get the rock to go into the storage area. This was due to a pebble-sized piece of debris obstructing the robotic arm, blocking the entrance to the tube docking area - nearly a month later, this has been solved. NASA used an untested'un-choking procedure', that involved pointing the drill containing a clogged test tube towards the ground and rotating it at high speed.