Tag Archives: sample

NASA’s Perseverance rover is currently trundling around the red planet, collecting samples and beaming data back to Earth. NASA plans to launch new missions in the next few years in partnership with the ESA aimed at collecting those samples and returning them to Earth. The agency has just completed a …

The Perseverance rover has already made history by collecting the first-ever rock cores on another planet, but NASA says a pebble problem has delayed operations. The rover’s advanced sample collection mechanism has become obstructed by some debris, and the team doesn’t want to continue until it can get the rocks …

Perseverance’s first cored-rock sample from Jezero Crater, Mars, is now enclosed in an airtight titanium sample tube, making it available for retrieval in the future, according to members of the Perseverance team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Through the Mars Sample Return campaign, NASA researchers and their colleagues from ESA …

NASA was flummoxed last week when the Perseverance rover attempted to collect its first rock core sample only to find the sample tube empty. The missing core was nowhere to be found, so the team had to take a step back and assess the situation on Mars. Now, NASA believes …

NASA’s Perseverance rover has been playing second fiddle to the Ingenuity helicopter in recent months. But in fairness, it’s a helicopter on Mars. Not to be outdone, Perseverance is gearing up for the next big step in its mission on the red planet. In the coming weeks, NASA will harvest …

An international team of scientists has studied both the water and organic contents from a dust particle recovered from the surface of the near-Earth S-type asteroid 25143 Itokawa by JAXA’s Hayabusa mission, which was the first mission that brought pristine asteroidal materials to Earth. The S-type asteroid Itokawa. Image credit: …

  NASA has sent numerous robotic explorers to Mars over the years, examining samples and surveying the fascinating geology of the red planet. Still, we could learn much more with Mars samples to examine in detail here on Earth. The recently launched Perseverance rover will lay the groundwork by collecting …

On October 28, 2020, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft successfully stowed its Sample Return Capsule (SRC) with a sample of surface material from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu. This image shows OSIRIS-REx’s collector head hovering over the Sample Return Capsule after the Touch-And-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism arm moved it into the proper position …

  NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft successfully landed gently on the surface of the asteroid Bennu last week and scooped up a sample of pristine material from the early solar system. It’s an incredible accomplishment for all involved, but OSIRIS-REx might end up a victim of its own success. NASA reports the …

  NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft has been in orbit of the asteroid Bennu since late 2018, and it’s almost time for the main event: collecting a sample from the surface. Researchers have used the last few years to get familiar with Bennu, and that has led to six studies that were …