Perseverance: Nasas Mars rover makes second drill sample bid

The US space agency's Perseverance rover has made another attempt to retrieve a rock sample on Mars.

New images show the robot made a neat hole in a thick slab dubbed "Rochette".

Mission scientists now need to check whether the rover's drill managed to secure a core. A previous attempt last month saw the sample crumble to dust.

If Perseverance was successful this time, it would represent the first ever rock section collected on another planet intended for return to Earth.

The rover is tasked with gathering more than two dozen cores over the next year or so that will be fetched home by a joint US and European effort later this decade.

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Nasa's Perseverance robot landed in Mars' Jezero Crater in February.

The deep, 45km-wide depression, some 20 degrees north of the planet's equator, looks to have held a lake billions of years ago.

Because of this, scientists think Jezero's sediments may hold traces of ancient microbial life - assuming biology ever took hold on Mars.

From its touchdown location, the robot has driven more than 2km to a slightly raised ridge nicknamed the Citadelle.

It's here that the Perseverance team selected Rochette as the target for the next drilling attempt.

The robot is equipped with a caching system that will take a finger-sized core of rock cut by the drill and place it in a titanium tube.

Before sealing this cylinder, however, the rover will image the contents. It was at this stage in early August during the first sampling attempt that Perseverance scientists realised they had nothing in the tube; the coring mechanism had shattered the rock to a powder which then fell back on to the ground around the drill hole.

The mission team will be hoping the same thing hasn't happened again with Rochette.

Perseverance continues to be shadowed by its mini-helicopter, Ingenuity.

Originally taken to Mars as a technology demonstration, the drone is now being used routinely to scout the terrain ahead of the rover.

Ingenuity has now made a total of 12 flights.