There are many space missions that have been carried out in recent decades to try to obtain as much information as possible about everything that is outside our planet. There are a large number of satellites that can be seen from our planet that are in orbit and are responsible for collecting information that is then sent to Earth. But in addition to satellites, robots have also been used for this type of mission , such as the Perseverance that is currently on Mars. However, this robot has suffered a mysterious mishap trying to collect evidence on the red planet.
Apparently one of the rock samples from the planet that the robot had taken has disappeared. But what exactly has happened?
The tube where the sample should be was empty
Perseverance had pierced the planet’s surface and had originally taken a rock sample that it had automatically stored in a tube . However, later the team realized that the tube where this sample should be was empty .
This was very surprising since all the procedures that the robot did to obtain the sample were done perfectly , so it was unintelligible that the rock was not in place.
In addition, the data from other similar tests that were done had been analyzed and found no abnormalities compared to other tests that were successful.
That is why the researchers began to think about possible causes of this event. For example, they considered the possibility that the rock simply fell to the ground instead of the tube, because, in addition, the tube was clean and without traces of dust or some similar substance inside.
Everything seems to indicate that it turned to dust
However, it seems that the theory that gains the most force is that the rock disintegrated during the collection process. It would make sense since, with the photographs obtained by the robot itself, it is seen that in the crater where it made the drilling there is no sample, so it is likely that the rock has become more dust during the extraction.
Therefore, everything indicates that the rock that the robot collected was not hard enough and during the process it ended up turning into dust.
Faced with this event, which is expected not to be repeated, the researchers want to send to an area other than Perseverance to collect samples. This place is a sediment from an old lake , so the rocks in this area should have more resistance.
The team hopes that this will not happen again. This robot is expected to collect many rock samples from Mars and also different typologies, in order to obtain as much information as possible from these samples.