MARS ROVER PICKS ITS OWN ROCK SAMPLES

Perseverance is analysing each sample's elemental composition in the ongoing search for ancient life

- Elizabeth Howell

NASA is hailing the Perseverance rover's improved ability to pick its own targets as a way of speeding up science on Mars. Without explicit direction from Earth, the Perseverance rover zapped two rock targets with its SuperCam instrument on Sol 442 (18 May 2022) to learn more about their elemental compositions, mission scientists said in an update on 31 May. "Normally when the rover team picks the targets, observations aren't made until the following day," Roger Wiens, principal investigator of SuperCam and a planetary scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, said. "If Perseverance picks its own targets, it can shoot them right after a drive. Having the SuperCam results right away can alert the team to unusual compositions in time to make decisions about further analyses before the rover moves on," Wiens added.