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This is a fortunate turn of events since early August, when Perseverance made its first attempt to obtain a sample, but scientists found that nothing actually ended up in the collection vial. Unfortunately, the core machine crushed the brittle rock into powder, which again fell to the ground near the borehole. Rochette was chosen in part because the stone was considered harder and more likely to get stuck in the pipe.

Why is it important: Collecting samples is one of the main objectives of the mission. Perseverance is equipped with 43 sample collection tubes, and NASA hopes to fill them all with rock and soil samples from Mars to return them to Earth one day. The 28-mile long Jezero Crater is believed to be the site of a former river delta. If billions of years ago, Mars was ever inhabited during the Wet Age, this is one of the best places for petrified life to find a home. While Perseverance is armed with tools that will tell us a lot about what exists in Jezero, the best way to really look for biosignatures and traces of microbial life is in a laboratory on Earth.