Confirmed by NASA on 6 September 2021, the Perseverance Mars—the rover currently exploring the surface of our brown, desolate twin planet—succeeded in collecting rock from its surface. This marks the first-ever time the rover got its robotic ‘hands’ (for lack of a better word) on Martian rock—with scientists eagerly awaiting to pore over it, once a future mission eventually brings it to Earth.

“I’ve got it!” the space agency tweeted from NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover official Twitter account—announcing the news in a humorous and frankly loveable way. In the tweet, it also released a photograph of the rock core, slightly thicker than a pencil placed inside a sample tube.

I’ve got it! With better lighting down the sample tube, you can see the rock core I collected is still in there. Up next, I’ll process this sample and seal the tube. #SamplingMars

Latest images: https://t.co/Ex1QDo3eC2 pic.twitter.com/gumqpmoXBW

— NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover (@NASAPersevere) September 5, 2021

Its first target was a rock nicknamed ‘Rochette’—reported to be around the size of a briefcase—located on a ridgeline, which is particularly interesting to scientists due to it containing ancient layers of exposed bedrock. To extract the rock, the rover used a drill with a hollow coring tool at the end of its 2-metre long robot arm to extract the samples.

Originally, the sample collected on 1 September was in doubt, with NASA unsure whether the rover had successfully held onto the precious rock due to initial images being unclear in poor light. Luckily, however, it was verified that the rover did in fact have a good enough grasp—with later images confirming the contents before transferring the tube into the rover’s interior for further measuring and imaging before hermetically sealing the container.

Although small in size, the Martian rock is expected to have huge value for space research back here on Earth. The news has been likened to the first samples of rock taken from the Moon, which is still invaluable to researchers today, by Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for science. NASA administrator, Bill Nelson, said in a statement that “this is a momentous achievement and I can’t wait to see the incredible discoveries produced by Perseverance and our team.”

“Getting the first sample under our belt is a huge milestone,” Perseverance project scientist Ken Farley of Caltech said. “When we get these samples back on Earth, they are going to tell us a great deal about some of the earliest chapters in the evolution of Mars. But however geologically intriguing the contents of sample tube 266 will be, they won’t tell the complete story of this place. There is a lot of Jezero Crater left to explore, and we will continue our journey in the months and years ahead.”

NASA’s Perseverance rover is currently the most complex mechanism ever sent to space: it took an impressive 3000 parts to form the state-of-the-art planet explorer (and rock collector) at the cutting-edge of space technology. Its job in collecting the sample of Mars is undoubtedly a monumental achievement but we’ve only scraped the surface in terms of what this robot is capable of… there is still much more to explore.

David Bowie’s cult query ‘Is there life on Mars?’ can finally be answered—affirmatively on top of that! Well, sort of. NASA just announced that its Mars rover Perseverance successfully converted some of the planet’s carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere into breathable oxygen. It is marked as the first-ever successful attempt at producing oxygen on another planet, and could well be the first step towards eventually making it possible for humans to live on Mars. Same thing, right?

In fact, according to the BBC, Perseverance has extracted enough oxygen from the air on Mars for a human to be able to breathe for roughly 10 minutes on the planet. The successful experiment was carried out by a toaster-sized unit in the rover called MOXIE, the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment. But will MOXIE be able one day to extract enough oxygen to make Mars a habitable planet? That’s the big question.

MOXIE is able to strip oxygen atoms from CO₂ molecules, which are made up of one carbon atom and two oxygen atoms. The waste product is carbon monoxide, which is then released into the Martian atmosphere. In the future, NASA is hoping that people sent on missions to Mars would take scaled-up versions of the unit with them rather than trying to carry all the oxygen needed to survive from Earth.

Although MOXIE only managed to produce five grams of the gas this time, the NASA team behind it is running the unit in different modes to discover how well it works. The expectation is that it can produce up to 10 grams of O₂ per hour.

It might not sound like much to some of you, but this achievement is a massive step forward for science and space, and will be of great excitement to those who are hoping for the first humans to be able to settle on Mars in the near future.

That being said, Perseverance’s main mission is not to serve as an oxygen factory. It’s actually on the planet to explore, seek out potential evidence of microbial life, and run experiments to determine if the planet can eventually support life. Again, same thing, right?

This oxygen conversion test falls into the last category, but given that the atmosphere of Mars is composed of 96 per cent carbon dioxide, with oxygen making up only 0.13 per cent compared to 21 per cent on Earth, any chance of humans spending time on the planet relies on being able to create oxygen first and foremost.

“MOXIE isn’t just the first instrument to produce oxygen on another world, it’s the first technology of its kind that will help future missions ‘live off the land’, using elements of another world’s environment, also known as in-situ resource utilisation,” Trudy Kortes, director of technology demonstrations within NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) told the BBC.

This same process can also be used to return from the planet: “Oxygen isn’t just the stuff we breathe,” Jim Reuter, associate administrator for NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate, said in a statement. “Rocket propellant depends on oxygen, and future explorers will depend on producing propellant on Mars to make the trip home.”

In other words, rockets need to have oxygen in order to burn fuel. According to NASA, a return trip from Mars for four astronauts would require 15,000 pounds of rocket fuel and 55,000 pounds (25 metric tons) of oxygen. For those same four astronauts to live on the planet for a full year, they would require just one metric ton of oxygen to breathe.

Let’s be realistic here—MOXIE has a lot more work to do, but the results from this technology demonstration are encouraging to say the least. Oh, and if this isn’t enough for you, that same mission just flew a mini-helicopter on Mars on Monday 19th April. Not bad, huh?