NASA’s Perseverance rover has successfully collected two samples of Martian rock and sealed them in airtight titanium tubes for eventual return to Earth.
Agency officials hailed the accomplishment as a milestone in the search for evidence of life that might have existed on the red planet billions of years ago, when Mars is believed to have been a warmer, wetter and more hospitable world. The rover’s first collection effort failed last month when a sample taken from another site crumbled before it could be placed into a collection tube.
