NASA has two interactive tools that enable the public to follow its Mars Perseverance rover as it makes its way around the Red Planet. One of the tools is designed to follow the rover "as though you were standing on the surface of Mars," according to the space agency, while the other tool shows Perseverance and Ingenuity's current location and the stops from their past journeys.
Only two days after successfully acquiring its first Mars rock sample for storage in a titanium tube, NASA collected and stored a second sample -- and it is already scouting for the perfect place from which to drill its third core. The space agency has named these first two samples "Montdenier" and "Montagnac," and they've already revealed some details about the Martian planet.
A few days after announcing that the Perseverance rover's second sample collection effort was a success, NASA has shared images of the actual sample within the titanium tube where it is stored. The sample image was made possible using a camera on the rover called the Sampling and Caching System Camera, confirming that a tiny piece of Mars has been fully and completely stored.
Yesterday, the Ingenuity helicopter completed its 13th flight taking it over the South Seitah area, where it captured images from a lower altitude than it has in the past. For the 13th mission, the helicopter again flew to the area of rock outcrops that it took images of during its 12 flight. The difference between flight number 12 and flight number 13 was the direction of the images. Flight 13 images were to looking in the opposite direction.
NASA is celebrating confirmation via data it received from its Perseverance Rover that indicates it has completed the collection of its first rock core sample on Mars. Data was received from the rover on September 1, indicating that successful coring operations had been completed. Images gathered from Perseverance clearly show an intact sample present in the sample collection tube after coring.
NASA has updated its Perseverance rock sampling plans, revealing the process it will initiate in the coming days as it determines where to drill next for a core sample. The news comes only a couple of weeks after the first drill sampling attempt failed, an issue believed to have been caused by rock composition that differed from what experts had expected.
Earlier this month, NASA attempted to drill and package a sample of material from the Martian surface using its Perseverance rover. Though everything seemed to go according to plan, further evaluation revealed that the sample collection tube was empty. Now, nearly two weeks later, the space agency is back with new plans.
NASA says that its Perseverance rover failed its first attempt to drill rock samples on Mars, an unexpected and disappointing outcome. NASA indicates that it believes future attempts will be successful, however, with the team behind the rover suspecting the issue is due to the rock itself, not Perseverance's hardware.
Using images captured by its Ingenuity helicopter during a complex flight on Mars, experts at NASA have generated a stereoscopic 3D photo that provides viewers with a more dynamic view of the Martian landscape. The image shows a particular Martian geologic feature NASA calls Raised Ridges, the data of which was captured by Ingenuity in late July.
NASA's Perseverance may have been on Mars since February, but the rover is only now preparing to take its very first sample of red planet rock. It's taken more than a month of exploration in Jezero Crater, the location NASA selected to land Perseverance for the strongest chance of discovering ancient signs of life, to identify the best candidate spot for a multi-stage sampling process.
NASA has announced that the Perseverance rover has completed testing the instruments on its robotic arm and is ready to get down to business. That business will see Perseverance testing rocks and dust for evidence of past life on the surface of the Red Planet. The rover has a seven-foot-long mechanical arm that has several instruments attached to the end.
NASA has announced that it will be holding a briefing on early science discoveries from the Perseverance Mars Rover next week. The virtual media briefing will take place at 1 PM EDT on Wednesday, July 21. At the briefing, NASA will discuss early science results from the Perseverance Mars Rover, among other topics.