NASA's Perseverance rover successfully collects first rock from Mars

Cape Canaveral: NASA's newest Mars rover has successfully collected its first rock sample for return to Earth, after last month's attempt came up empty.

The Perseverance rover's chief engineer, Adam Stelzner, called it a perfect core sample. "I've never been more happy to see a hole in a rock," he tweeted Thursday (September 2, 2021).

A month ago, Perseverance drilled into much softer rock, and the sample crumbled and didn't get inside the titanium tube. The rover drove a half-mile to a better sampling spot to try again. Team members analyzed data and pictures before declaring success.

Perseverance arrived in February at Mars' Jezero Crater, believed to be the home of a lush lakebed and river delta billions of years ago, in search of rocks that might hold evidence of ancient life. 

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NASA plans to launch more spacecraft to retrieve the samples collected by Perseverance; engineers are hoping to return as many as three dozen samples in about a decade.

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