Perseverance rover imaged one of its drill bits on Sol 1494 with a MastCam-Z camera. We can see a rock core inside its sample tube. I’m assuming this is the same core (#29) that was imaged inside the rover with its CacheCam a couple of days ago. I’m not sure why it’s been brought outside again. But one possible answer is that the core is stuck in its tube and preventing it being pushed down into the sample tube far enough, to permit capping / sealing the tube.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech
I don’t think that battle will ever end. Such battles end up scrapping years of work. Budgets that change every 4 years on most missions are really wasteful, budgets that change more frequently are madness IMHO. We’ll see how it plays out this time.