Nasa’s perseverance drilled into the surface of Mars failed in its initial attempt to collect rock samples that would be picked up by future missions for analysis by scientists on Earth.
The US space agency published images Friday of a small mound with a hole in its center next to the rover–the first ever dug into the Red Planet by a robot.
But data sent to Earth by the rover after its first attempt to collect a sample and seal it in a tube indicated on rock had been gathered.
“While this is not the ‘hole-in-one’ we hoped for, there is always risk with breaking new ground,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s science mission directorate, in a statement.
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