There's something so compelling about the outcrop perseverance is on that it's spent nearly a month and even repositioned to check it out. But the sampling effort produced barely any material in the tube, so now what? On this episode of Mars Guy. After scoping out the interior of Belva Crater, perseverance turned back toward a nearby ridge covered in cobbles and boulders, some of which can best be described as freaky. Here's Mars Guy for scale, checking out a boulder that looks a bit like an animal skull. Some combination of its lithology and erosional history led to these shapes. Most of these rocks probably arrived after being transported by what likely was a meandering river with occasional raging floods, see episode 110. But it's the outcrop of crudely layered rock underneath that strong attention. It looks like it was formed by bits of sand and pebbles, probably transported by the same river, then deposited in layers and cemented together with some combination of clay minerals, carbonates, or sulfates, which could possibly contain bits of organic matter from long dead microbes if they ever existed on Mars. The abrading bit on the mighty rotary percussion drill was used to grind through the outer surface of the rock to get a better look at its interior texture. This was followed by the requisite blast of nitrogen gas from the gas dust removal tool to blow away the drill tailings. This left is a 5 cm wide, relatively smooth abrasion patch that the Watson camera and the other arm-mounted instruments can get a look at. The view from Watson reveals a mix of sizes, shapes, and colors of the grains, showing them to be very poorly sorted, consistent with deposition by flowing water. The mix of angular to sub-rounded grains demonstrates a range of transport distances. The longer you go with the flow, the more rounded you get. Getting a sample from this rock presented a challenge. Would it be cemented enough to provide a solid core, or would it crumble and fall out of the bit? Perseverance was parked on a slightly uphill slope, so to help keep a crumbled sample inside a bit during the viewing operation, the rover was repositioned to give it some downhill pitch. The coring operation proceeded nominally, NASA speak for according to plan, leaving behind the typical miniature volcano of drill tailings surrounding the hull. But inspection of the hollow drill bit with its sample tube inside left caused for concern. This is what you want to see a rock core at the tip of the tube, but that's not what it looked like with the latest sample. The lighting at 2 that afternoon made it hard to see inside the tube, so Perseverance started at about 7 a.m. on the next saw and took a bunch of images with different exposure and focus settings. Now it became clear that the tube was not full. There were just some chunks of rock above the shiny bottom of the tube, not ideal. So what happens now? At this point there are more recent images of the drill bit, but it's not clear whether the sample has been dumped. It is clear that other operations with the arm have resumed, but no indication that the sample tube was ever placed on the rover. Maybe the team has decided that trying to collect a sample here is just too much trouble.