Assessing Perseverance's First Sample Attempt
BLOG | August 11, 2021
Written by Louise Jandura, Chief Engineer for Sampling & Caching at NASA/JPL
After the commands for sol 164 were sent for the first sample acquisition and processing on the target Roubion, it was time to take a few hours off and wait for the result. More than 90 engineers and scientists who had worked years preparing for this moment gathered online at 2 am PDT on Friday, August 6 to wait together for the first data from the coring operation. This data verified that the Corer had achieved the full commanded depth (7 centimeters) and we saw the image of the hole on Mars surrounded by the cuttings pile (material produced around the borehole during coring). So far, so good we thought as we signed off to try and get a few more hours of sleep before the next set of data arrived about 6 hours later.
What followed later in the morning was a rollercoaster of emotions. Engineering telemetry and an image from the CacheCam inside the Adaptive Caching Assembly (ACA, the tube processing hardware) confirmed we had transferred the sample tube from the Corer to the ACA, sealed the sample tube, and successfully placed it in storage – a huge first-time success. The team was elated. Then the volume measurement and post-measurement image arrived indicating that the sample tube was empty. It took a few minutes for this reality to sink in but the team quickly transitioned to investigation mode. It is what we do. It is the basis of science and engineering.
What followed was two full days of combing through the data and adding more observations to the tactical plan to augment the investigation. Thus far we have concluded the following:
https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/mission/status/320/assessing-perseverances-first-sample-attempt/
