Perseverance got a second sample from a scientifically compelling outcrop. Then the team embarked on a maneuver that the project manager at JPL said she never imagined they would perform, ever. They dumped the sample on this episode of Mars Guy. The story starts a month ago with the drilling operation. Here's what that looks like in a NASA animation. When the drill bit was presented to the mass cams e-camera, it showed a core sample inside, so all was well. But when the robotic arm tried to transfer the bit into the bit-care cell, the operation ground to a halt when sensors detected a jam. Perseverance phoned home and waited for instructions. The first step was to pull the bit back out and look inside with the Watson camera. It showed that pieces of the drill core had fallen out during the bit transfer, two in the bit exchange mechanism and two below. The tanks on the drill bit couldn't dock with the mechanism. The bit-care cell was designed to handle debris, just through its normal rotation operation, it can dump debris through the opening at the bottom, which then can fall out of the bottom of the rover. So Perseverance was commanded to rotate the carousel 75 degrees and then back. This simple action did indeed dump the upper tube pebbles, but not the lower ones. So they'd require a different maneuver to get rid of them. Meanwhile, what to do about the drill bit was presented to the front has cam for a close-up inspection. Turns out there was still material inside the tube. This could have been a viable sample, but it wasn't clear how much was really inside. So better to dump it and reuse the tube for another sampling attempt. In the strangest video yet from the mission, Masscam Z caught the rotating drill spitting out a pebble. Here it is again in super slow motion. The next step in the plan included simply turning the bit downward to let gravity do the job. Only a tiny fragment came out of this operation. The view into the tube after these efforts showed that there was still more of the sample inside. This would call for more drastic efforts to empty it. Here's a crude simulation of the percussion action of the drill, which was used for 208 seconds. This amount of shaking definitely dumped out a bunch of material. The view inside the tube shows that it is now completely empty and ready for another sample. But what about the two remaining pebbles in the bitcarousel? The plan was to drive to these nearby outcrops to tilt the rover to help dislodge the pebbles. This included a 90 degree turn in place. Here's Mars Guy for scale. That maneuver was pretty bumpy with all of the rocks to drive over, so that likely helped dislodge the pebbles. Afterward, the view into the bitcarousel showed the result. No more pebbles. This meant that the drill bit could finally be put back in place and showed that the system is working and ready for another sample.