First Ever Borehole On Mars Made By NASA’s Perseverance Rover

The U.S. space agency released on Friday images of the first ever borehole on Mars made by NASA’s Perseverance rover.

Unfortunetaley, during the first attempt the drill, mounted on a robotic arm, failed to recover any rock samples, as a somehow disgruntled rover “tweeted” on “his” social media oulet:

The car-sized rover landed six months ago inside Jezero Crater, an ancient impact crater located just above the Martian equator in the planet’s eastern hemisphere.

This site was chosen as the presence of a large canyon and a fan-shaped river delta suggest that the crater once hosted a lake. This hypothesis is further supported by the sediments found inside the crater. Thanks to NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the chemical composition of the ground can be mapped…