Perseverance wins another successful contract

The Perseverance Mars rover has completed its seventh rock sample collection, the US space agency (NASA) has announced. 

The rover, the size of an urban SUV, has drilled into a Martian rock to collect another sample for research. This was the seventh sample Perseverance has collected since it reached the Jezero crater in February 2021 - from a Space.

“I plan to get another sample before I head up the ancient river deltaand", the NASA team tweeted, as if the rover itself had spoken.

My rock collection is growing...

I've got my seventh core sample onboard, drilled from the rock you see here. I plan to get one more sample here before heading on toward the ancient river delta. #SamplingMars

Latest images: https://t.co/Ex1QDokQ0C pic.twitter.com/BpuCivVCE9

- NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover (@NASAPersevere) March 8, 2022

The Perseverance its primary mission is to search for signs of possible life on Mars, during which the spacecraft will take a series of geological measurements and collect rock samples to be returned to Earth in a later coordinated mission.

Launched in July 2020, the vehicle landed in the Jezero crater last February. One of its biggest scientific achievements is the proof that the Jezero crater on Mars may once have been water. Although satellite observations had already suggested this, it was only with Perseverance's data that the researchers were able to prove conclusively that the Jezero crater where the robot landed was indeed a huge lake 3.6 billion years ago.

This discovery is of particular importance because it suggests that organisms once lived on the red planet, and the rover may find traces of them during its mission to Mars.