Three weeks to the day after landing on Mars, the Perseverance rover has started to analyze a first rock on Mars.
And the robot discovered a basalt type rock which is quite common on Earth.
A preliminary analysis that he carried out thanks to the SuperCam, his on-board camera made in France.
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Three weeks ago to the day, the robot called Perseverance arrived on the planet Mars, whose mission is to collect samples that will be brought back to Earth in 10 years.
French Pride, the rover sent by NASA, took on board a tricolor camera, called SuperCam.
The instrument, equipped in particular with a laser, should help determine the chemical and mineralogical composition of the surface of the red planet, in search of traces of life.
It transmitted its first data the day after the rover landed, on February 18.
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The SuperCam in "very good health"
These first results are proof of the "very good health" of the instrument, according to its co-designer Sylvestre Maurice, scientific manager at the Institute for Research in Astrophysics and Planetology (IRAP).
But this is not the only good news: 12 days after the start of the mission, the SuperCam carried out its first "shot" of analyzes with its laser on a rock which turns out to be interesting.
There are indeed elements present on Earth, such as "silicon, potassium, calcium, aluminum, but also manganese", details at the microphone of Europe 1 Sylvestre Maurice.
"We are also talking about hydrogen here," he adds.
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"At this point, we obviously haven't completed the full analysis, but this is a basalt type rock, fairly common on Earth, found on the ocean floor or on continents."
The SuperCam also spotted dust grains whose size surprised scientists, since they are less than a tenth of a millimeter, or the size of a hair.