...will we get another sample? Will the last sample get properly sealed?
Phil

Perseverance's Sampling and Caching System Camera, or CacheCam, captured this time-lapse series of images of the rover's 14th rock-core sample. Taken over four Martian days (or sols) – on Sols 595, 599, 601, and 604 of the mission (Oct. 22, Oct. 26, Oct. 28, and Oct. 31, 2022) – they document the results of the mission's use of the rover's Bore Sweep Tool to remove dust from the tube. Small dust grains can be seen moving around the rim of the sample tube. The tool is designed to clean the inner surface near the tube's opening and also move the collected rock sample further down into the tube. Because the CacheCam's depth of field is plus or minus 5 millimeters, the rock sample, which is farther down in the tube, is not in focus in these images. The pixel scale in this image is approximately 13 microns per pixel. The images were acquired on Oct. 5. When the rover attempted to insert a seal into the open end of the tube, the seal did not release as expected from its dispenser.
The bright gold-colored ring in the foreground is the bearing race, an asymmetrical flange that assists in shearing off a sample once the coring drill has bored into a rock. The sample collection tube's serial number, "184," can be seen in the 2 o'clock position on the bearing race. About the size and shape of a standard lab test tube, these tubes are designed to contain representative samples of Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust).

The Adaptive Caching Assembly (ACA) was designed to function with the amounts of sample and additional dust generated in the acquisition processes and transported throughout the Sampling and Caching Subsystem (SCS) by the manipulation of the Sample Tubes and Bits. The Dust Mitigation Tool (DMT) and the Bore Sweeping Tool (BST) were added to the ACA to provide mitigations should the need arise to clear dust either from the Glove or from the Tube bore to facilitate replacing the Tube in storage or dispensing a Seal, respectively.

...One of the possible causes of the seal’s nondeployment may be that Martian dust adhered to a location on the tube’s interior surface where the dust could impede successful coupling and extraction. To ensure a hermetic seal, the tolerances between tube and seal are, by necessity, extremely small: 0.00008 inches (0.002 mm). The rover’s CacheCam captured images showing light deposits of dust on the tube’s lip, but the camera’s imaging capabilities along the tube’s inner surface are quite limited.

To test the hypothesis that dust was impeding progress, the rover’s engineering team employed (for the first time during the mission) the Sampling and Caching System’s Bore Sweeping Tool. The tool is designed to clean the inner surface near the tube’s opening and also move the collected rock sample further down into the tube. Data collected after multiple uses of the tool indicates it pushed at least some of dust that was lining the inner periphery deeper into the sample tube, and as a result the amount of force required to insert the seal into the tube during additional sealing attempts was diminished.

To date, 19 Bore Sweeping Tool operations have been performed, and a total of three attempts to bring tube and seal together. And, while further progress has been documented, the seal has yet to release from its dispenser...

That would be the light-toned band topo. above Cape Nukshak.
I disremember what cation it may be, but it is likely a sulfate.
--Bill

Two Mastcam-Z left eye filters 1 to 6 multispectral principal component images from sol 614

Those "bulged layers" noted in Post 478 were first seen on Sol 614 and may be weathering-related.....
....I wonder if there is any relation with those rounded boulders I mentioned earlier?

Nicely done Tau.