NASA's Perseverance rover's first sample collection didn't go as planned due to trouble with a "unique" and unexpectedly powdery Mars rock.

Perseverance landed on the Red Planet on Feb. 18 to search for signs of ancient Mars life and collect and store samples for future study back on Earth. However, when the rover made its first attempt to take a sample of Martian dirt on Aug. 6, things didn't go exactly as planned in a series of events that Louise Jandura, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory's chief engineer for sampling and caching, described as a "rollercoaster of emotions" in a NASA statement.

Initial signs suggested that the rover had successfully collected and stored a chunk of Martian material in one of its 43 sample tubes. But the morning after the collection, the volume measurement and post-measurement images came in and mission team members back on Earth determined that the sample tube was actually empty. After two days of investigating what happened, the team declared that this particular Martian rock was too powdery to be successfully collected.