Rock’s off for space explorer

Nasa’s newest Mars rover failed in its first attempt to pick up a rock sample to eventually be brought back to Earth.

The rover Perseverance drilled into the floor of the planet’s Jezero Crater to extract a finger-sized sample from slabs of flat rocks.

The drill seemed to work as intended, but it appeared no rock made it into the sample tube. Engineers were working to determine what happened.

“While this is not the ‘hole-in-one’ we hoped for, there is always risk with breaking new ground,” said Nasa’s science mission chief Thomas Zurbuchen.