My compliments to JV, that’s excellent work. I’m seeing some new and exciting details in this sample here.

I will never play down or discount budget cuts, but I will say this - under Trump (and Musk), tariff policy is practically fodder for meteorologists; it changes about as often as the major weather systems do. I think we will find that the story of the budget will change with the prevailing wind as well. Planetary science has seen dark days (under Nixon, and after Viking) before, and even Steve Squyres himself had his tussles with the Obama administration. This battle isn’t over yet, Paul.

The textures visible in the tube on the two sets of images (from 1497 and 1492) look quite similar (there are dark grains/spherules visible in both, in similar quantities), and the outcrop before the rover has changed very little in the last week (comparing NavCam images from 1490 and 1497), so I’m fairly certain Percy hasn’t tried coring again. This should be the same core.

I’m wondering if they’re going to take any close-up images of the tailings from the borehole… but I think your priorities are the correct ones, Paul 😉

From the latest images I’ve seen on sol 1497, It appears the tube is not yet sealed. The surface of the sample visible in the tube also looks different (is that a first?), definitely not resembling what we saw of it on 1492.

I’m confident we’ll be able to seal this core (or similar material), but the mission has slowed to a crawl, it would seem.

Yes, quite a few of those have been spotted up and down this hillside. Rocks of this type are currently under active investigation by the science team.

Ah, but you mustn’t forget that Percy’s microphone is also keenly listening in whenever it uses the laser. The geologists are using the sounds of the explosions to estimate the hardness and material properties of the rocks they’re shooting:

We find that louder and more stable acoustic signals are recorded from rock with compact surfaces, i.e., low presence loose particulate material, and harder mineral phases in their composition.

We would therefore be quite aware of any screams from Martian life-forms we inadvertently shoot.

Just saying.

LOL Mustn’t feed the trolls, now. I mean, the one you’re responding to is literally flashing a username that translates as “False False”.

Magnificent usernames in this thread.

You can’t tell the players without a program.

Key quote from Steve Ruff/Mars Guy:

I’ll note that China’s mission probably won’t have access to comparably compelling samples as those collected by Perseverance because of engineering constraints that limit where it can land, and the limited mobility options it will have.

In my opinion, Professor Ruff is understating his case here. Regular readers will already be aware of the incredible science value of the samples Percy has collected (particularly those the rover has onboard right now, which are collectively more valuable than those already delivered to the sample depot), but I’d like to make a comparison of my own.

The planned Tianwen-3 sample return mission would be the “Apollo 11” of sample return.

Returning all of the Perseverance samples would be like Apollo 12, 14, 15, 16 and 17 - combined.

We have sealed tubes that sample multiple generations of watery environments on Mars, one that lasted tens of millions of years (at minimum). We would be able to date the formation of Jezero Crater, which would help us understand the ages of events all over the planet. AND WE HAVE SAMPLE 25, which contains a potential biosignature (and that’s not just my opinion).

If successful, return of Percy’s samples could trigger seismic advances for entire sciences, like geology and biology, not just planetary science. People should understand what’s at stake.

Yeah, we really are entering a new phase of this mission. There is a whole world out there to investigate beyond Gale Crater, but sometimes I think one mission isn’t enough for this place.

Yep, that’s the exact term used by some planetary geologists since this kind of terrain was first seen in 2004. On this mission they’ve been quite common as well, starting with the very first abrasion/sampling site, among many others.

New images up - just a few NavCam shots, but we can see that the coring bit has been withdrawn from the hole. Good news, it would seem.

Multiple sols with no public data from Percy. Is it too soon to say “I have a very bad feeling about this”?

I’m glad that we’re still seeing fresh data from Curiosity on the server. There’s a lot of stuff to absorb from this mission, especially if you’re me, but it does help my workflow throughout the day to see the latest from Jezero. No speculation here, just sad vibes.

Two sols have passed, and the coring drill is still embedded inside the rock…

I’m assuming this isn’t intentional. Paul, do you recall something like this ever happening before? If the rover encountered some kind of fault, it makes sense that they would leave everything where it is and assess the problem before acting.

Not onboard the rover, no - which is one of the reasons many hardcore types are obsessed with sample return, in spite of the cost and extreme technical difficulty.

A number of age estimates for stuff in this area (the Jezero crater itself, the old mudstone down in the river delta we sampled last year, and so on) put them at easily 3.5 billion years plus - possibly older. That means the samples Perseverance already has in hand could be just as old as, or even older than, the most ancient sedimentary rock we’ve found on Earth. I get chills thinking about it.

Always so strange and wonderful to see how these objects, entirely free of atmosphere or storm, can have such a “soft” look - with craters seemingly buried under a layer of snow or paste, or something. I wonder if that would be that be due to the phenomenon of regolith moving via “seismic shaking”, which is supposed to partially bury smaller features in these asteroid landscapes. Even these preliminary images have enough detail and apparent features to beguile the eye.

DJ definitely doesn’t appear as “soft” as Deimos or Atlas (out by Saturn), but those two moons are quite a bit larger than this inner main belt asteroid. A lovely reminder that there’s a lot to see in the Belt.

We do these abrasions on the rocks before we start analyzing them in detail with the science instruments.

The geologists prefer not to analyze the raw, eroded outer surfaces of rocks - they tend to be covered in dust and sand, and they’ve been eaten away by the wind, or even (over long timescales) the minor amounts of humidity in the Martian atmosphere. By grinding away the outer surface, the fresh, unaltered interior of the rock is exposed.

The instruments then let you learn what minerals and other materials are in the rock, hopefully allowing us to ID what we’re looking at. If the instruments turn up interesting results, the science team may decide to take a sample of the rock for eventual return to Earth.

Hope this helps. Feel free to ask if I wasn’t clear about something.

If you will pardon the late reply:

From what I can see, the colour image featured in this post is not vertical - it’s actually a close-up image from the microscope on the end of the rover’s robotic arm, which you can see placed over the target in this image, taken less than an hour after the microscopic image. The slope on which this rock/outcrop is found is well below 45º, or the rover’s wheels wouldn’t be resting on it. You can see a wider view of the rock adjacent to the target in this image from the same sol (if you’re interested, here are all the images taken on sol 4513).

That being said, your question is pertinent. Yes, I would call them layers also. There has clearly been deposition here - a lot of it - but erosion has shaped the landscape here in interesting ways too (this latter image was also taken on 4513).

The thing about folding is that it doesn’t occur in insolation, or only in very small areas; it’s generally a response to forces that act on regional scales. If there were folding at the rover’s current location, it would likely be visible in the surrounding countryside, including possibly on the towering layered ridges that now surround the rover.

Even for geologists, this field site makes you think.

I just want to make sure I understand what/how you’re seeing this, I hope you don’t mind:

When you say you’re seeing vertical structure, are you talking about those protruding (and rather phallic) parts in the upper half of the image?

EDITED TO ADD image with relevant features outlined in yellow:

And in today’s episode of pareidolia…

Zooming out from the patch:

• Target rock close-up: before abrading
• Medium close-up (~15 cm across)
• View of the outcrop
• Outcrop with rover in FOV
• Outcrop and rover - wider context