02/03/2023
Engineers are trying to work out what went wrong when the US space agency's Perseverance rover tried to gather its first rock core on Mars.
The robot's mechanisms seemed to work perfectly but when a metal tube expected to hold the sample was examined, it was found to be empty.
The mission team think the particular properties of the target rock may have been to blame.
More images and telemetry pulled down from Mars should solve the puzzle.