My compliments to JV, that’s excellent work. I’m seeing some new and exciting details in this sample here.

I will never play down or discount budget cuts, but I will say this - under Trump (and Musk), tariff policy is practically fodder for meteorologists; it changes about as often as the major weather systems do. I think we will find that the story of the budget will change with the prevailing wind as well. Planetary science has seen dark days (under Nixon, and after Viking) before, and even Steve Squyres himself had his tussles with the Obama administration. This battle isn’t over yet, Paul.

The textures visible in the tube on the two sets of images (from 1497 and 1492) look quite similar (there are dark grains/spherules visible in both, in similar quantities), and the outcrop before the rover has changed very little in the last week (comparing NavCam images from 1490 and 1497), so I’m fairly certain Percy hasn’t tried coring again. This should be the same core.

I’m wondering if they’re going to take any close-up images of the tailings from the borehole… but I think your priorities are the correct ones, Paul 😉

From the latest images I’ve seen on sol 1497, It appears the tube is not yet sealed. The surface of the sample visible in the tube also looks different (is that a first?), definitely not resembling what we saw of it on 1492.

I’m confident we’ll be able to seal this core (or similar material), but the mission has slowed to a crawl, it would seem.

Yes, quite a few of those have been spotted up and down this hillside. Rocks of this type are currently under active investigation by the science team.

Ah, but you mustn’t forget that Percy’s microphone is also keenly listening in whenever it uses the laser. The geologists are using the sounds of the explosions to estimate the hardness and material properties of the rocks they’re shooting:

We find that louder and more stable acoustic signals are recorded from rock with compact surfaces, i.e., low presence loose particulate material, and harder mineral phases in their composition.

We would therefore be quite aware of any screams from Martian life-forms we inadvertently shoot.

Just saying.

LOL Mustn’t feed the trolls, now. I mean, the one you’re responding to is literally flashing a username that translates as “False False”.

Magnificent usernames in this thread.

You can’t tell the players without a program.

Key quote from Steve Ruff/Mars Guy:

I’ll note that China’s mission probably won’t have access to comparably compelling samples as those collected by Perseverance because of engineering constraints that limit where it can land, and the limited mobility options it will have.

In my opinion, Professor Ruff is understating his case here. Regular readers will already be aware of the incredible science value of the samples Percy has collected (particularly those the rover has onboard right now, which are collectively more valuable than those already delivered to the sample depot), but I’d like to make a comparison of my own.

The planned Tianwen-3 sample return mission would be the “Apollo 11” of sample return.

Returning all of the Perseverance samples would be like Apollo 12, 14, 15, 16 and 17 - combined.

We have sealed tubes that sample multiple generations of watery environments on Mars, one that lasted tens of millions of years (at minimum). We would be able to date the formation of Jezero Crater, which would help us understand the ages of events all over the planet. AND WE HAVE SAMPLE 25, which contains a potential biosignature (and that’s not just my opinion).

If successful, return of Percy’s samples could trigger seismic advances for entire sciences, like geology and biology, not just planetary science. People should understand what’s at stake.

Yep, that’s the exact term used by some planetary geologists since this kind of terrain was first seen in 2004. On this mission they’ve been quite common as well, starting with the very first abrasion/sampling site, among many others.

New images up - just a few NavCam shots, but we can see that the coring bit has been withdrawn from the hole. Good news, it would seem.

Multiple sols with no public data from Percy. Is it too soon to say “I have a very bad feeling about this”?

I’m glad that we’re still seeing fresh data from Curiosity on the server. There’s a lot of stuff to absorb from this mission, especially if you’re me, but it does help my workflow throughout the day to see the latest from Jezero. No speculation here, just sad vibes.

Two sols have passed, and the coring drill is still embedded inside the rock…

I’m assuming this isn’t intentional. Paul, do you recall something like this ever happening before? If the rover encountered some kind of fault, it makes sense that they would leave everything where it is and assess the problem before acting.

Not onboard the rover, no - which is one of the reasons many hardcore types are obsessed with sample return, in spite of the cost and extreme technical difficulty.

A number of age estimates for stuff in this area (the Jezero crater itself, the old mudstone down in the river delta we sampled last year, and so on) put them at easily 3.5 billion years plus - possibly older. That means the samples Perseverance already has in hand could be just as old as, or even older than, the most ancient sedimentary rock we’ve found on Earth. I get chills thinking about it.

We do these abrasions on the rocks before we start analyzing them in detail with the science instruments.

The geologists prefer not to analyze the raw, eroded outer surfaces of rocks - they tend to be covered in dust and sand, and they’ve been eaten away by the wind, or even (over long timescales) the minor amounts of humidity in the Martian atmosphere. By grinding away the outer surface, the fresh, unaltered interior of the rock is exposed.

The instruments then let you learn what minerals and other materials are in the rock, hopefully allowing us to ID what we’re looking at. If the instruments turn up interesting results, the science team may decide to take a sample of the rock for eventual return to Earth.

Hope this helps. Feel free to ask if I wasn’t clear about something.

Zooming out from the patch:

• Target rock close-up: before abrading
• Medium close-up (~15 cm across)
• View of the outcrop
• Outcrop with rover in FOV
• Outcrop and rover - wider context

SECOND TRYSIES ! !

Nothing makes me more excited on this mission than going backward. Something must be pretty important all the way up there, 11 m higher up!

It wasn’t even a trip into orbit. Their rather short voyage was a sub-orbital hop. A low orbit of Earth requires a speed on the order of 8 km per second - Blue Origin can make about Mach 3, from what I read, which is circa 1 km per second. You go up, you go down. That’s it. They don’t even go particularly high (~100 km), and the apogee doesn’t keep you “above the atmosphere” (LOL) for long. Given the risks, I’m not sure it’s worth it, personally.

If we really want to inspire people by pointing out women’s accomplishments in spaceflight and space exploration, maybe we should be talking about people like Eileen Collins (astronaut on key shuttle/station missions), Lindy Elkin-Stanton (science lead for Psyche, the first to a metallic asteroid), Maria Zuber (lead the GRAIL mission to the Moon, co-discovered the rifts in the Ocean of Storms), or Mimi Aung (lead engineer for the Ingenuity 'copter on Mars 2020). And I’ve only mentioned a few Americans with recent work here; the rest of the world has plenty of enterprising female space scientists and aerospace engineers.

I share the general distaste in this thread and on Lemmy generally for this sort of celebrity stunt, and I’m glad to see the criticism. I do sometimes think, however, that for a certain kind of person, Bezos and Musk are becoming associated or even synonymous with spaceflight/exploration generally, which is a dangerous association to make. People have many, diverse and very legitimate reasons for going to space - there’s a lot more going on than joyrides and ego trips.

The colour of the tool?

It even works most of the time - pretty much all the time, actually. We’ve only failed twice so far, out of… something like 70 attempts, I believe. And only because those two rock targets were too hard.

You’re right, it’s impressive. Come to think of it, though, Spirit and Opportunity used to do this too, and Curiosity’s still at it, so we’ve actually been at this for twenty years now. Yeah, it’s been a ride.

Excellent episode. Even if hadn’t prominently featured power tools!

Anyone who wants to understand the purpose and process of making abrasion patches (e.g. #37, made about three weeks ago), should watch this short video.