Perseverance Collects Another Mars Rock And Gives It An Adorable Name

Perseverance Collects Another Mars Rock, And Gives It An Adorable Name

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It’s almost the end of the year, but Perseverance is still keeping busy! The rover recently collected another sample from a rock with a cute nickname.

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Perseverance Collects Another Mars Rock And Gives It An Adorable Name

NASA’s Perseverance rover just took another big step in its mission to find ancient Mars life, with the rover collecting (and naming) another rock sample from the Red Planet. For decades, Mars has been a deep source of fascination for astronomers on Earth. The nearby planet is one of Earth’s closest neighbors, has a solid surface for humans to walk on, and is believed to have once had ancient life billions of years ago. From studying Mars’ environment to sending the first humans there, there’s a lot of Martian research currently in the works.

One such mission saw NASA launch its Perseverance rover to the alien world in July 2020 — with it landing there in February 2021. Along with exploring the planet and capturing thousands of new images, one of Perseverance’s main goals is to collect Martian rock samples. Later missions will eventually see NASA collect these samples and send them back to Earth, thus allowing scientists to uncover Mars’s rich history like never before.

After already collecting six samples since it arrived on Mars ten months ago, the Perseverance Twitter account just confirmed the collection of its seventh one. At 1:32 AM ET on December 20, the account Tweeted that it had collected another sample from a rock it named ‘Robine.’ NASA regularly names target rocks to help keep them organized from each other. It’s a useful strategy for the mission, and it also adds a layer of cuteness on top of a pretty serious endeavor. The Perseverance account also noted there’s “still some processing to do to get this one capped and sealed, but so far so good for another round of #SamplingMars.”

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Wrapping Up A Busy Year For Perseverance

Looking back at 2021, it’s pretty incredible how much NASA’s been able to accomplish with Perseverance. The rover collected its first rock sample on September 5, and since then, it’s been collecting new ones at a fairly rapid pace. Not including this most recent sample, Perseverance has four samples containing Martian rock cores, one sample of the planet’s atmosphere, and another holding ‘witness’ material that’ll alert scientists of any contaminates Perseverance acquired on Earth. Once Perseverance’s work is all said and done, it’ll have 43 sample tubes to return to Earth for further examination.

The past few months have also seen Perseverance capture and share thousands of photos of its Martian journies — 179,564 photos, to be exact. While every single image isn’t particularly noteworthy, there have been a few exciting gems in there. Perseverance has seen Mars rocks with radically different sizes, vast and empty landscapes, gorgeous dunes, and some rocks that look like creatures here on Earth.

What makes this all the more exciting is that Perseverance’s mission is really just getting started. NASA doesn’t expect the mission to end until April 2023 at the earliest. And even then, it may very well become longer as other Mars missions have. There’s no telling what Perseverance will find a year from now, but whatever it is, it’s bound to be pretty incredible.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/perseverance-collect-mars-rock-sample-robine-dec-2021/

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