Historic first! NASA robot took the first rocky shard from Mars
Perseverance, the robot that NASA sent to Mars, collected the first rock sample on the Red Planet. Historic first step!
For the first time in human history, a piece of rock from another planet will be returned to Earth! Perseverance, NASA’s spacecraft on Mars, has collected its first rock sample that will be returned to Earth by 2030.
It is an ESA spacecraft that will then come to retrieve the piece of rock that was found in the last hours on the surface of Mars.
It was the US Space Agency’s Twitter account that broke the news: “I have it! With better lighting in the sample tube, you can see that the rock core I collected is still there. Then I will process this sample and seal it into the tube.”
So far, all previous attempts to recover rocks from the Red Planet have failed, because the rock in which the probe is dug was too fragmented.
Persevere on Mars for 7 months. It explores from the bottom of what could be a lush ancient lake and river delta that dried up billions of years ago. The rover searches for traces of water and microbial life on the Red Planet.
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