The rover dug out a core slightly thicker than a pencil from Mars' Jezero Crater. The sample is now enclosed in an airtight titanium sample tube, making it available for retrieval in the future.
Perseverance used the rotary-percussive drill at the end of its robotic arm to retrieve the core sample from a flat, briefcase-size Mars rock nicknamed 'Rochette'.
After completing the coring process, the arm moved the corer, bit and sample tube so that the rover’s camera could image the contents of the still-unsealed tube and transmit the results back to Earth.
After mission controllers confirmed the cored rock’s presence in the tube, they sent a command to complete processing of the sample after which the container was hermetically sealed.
Image credit: nasa
The sample (pictured above...