NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover

Ah hahahahahahahahaah

• We have 3rd-gen satellites that can correctly identify minerals from orbit, hundreds of kilometres away
• We launch a huge, complex lander with an outstanding geology toolset, far better than the Apollo generation could have dreamed of
• We send this technological marvel to a dry, eroded, pockmarked river delta billions of years old
• The sampling system flawlessly acquires samples of "weak", sometimes heavily-altered rocks that started off as loose sand, some even containing clay
• We can plan the vehicle's traverse so accurately that rover drivers can take weekends off without killing productivity

... and even now, years after landing, this planet still throws us!

I'm not even mad. I'm fascinated. The most difficult samples to acquire, our biggest "failures", have been found at the literal lowest and highest elevations the rover has reached. Seriously, this apparent failure on 1409 has happened at a site almost 800 metres above the crater floor Percy first sampled in 2021. And both of these "problem" sampling sites clearly read as volcanic rocks... stuff that you'd think would be much easier to collect than old river sediment.

Oh yes, this is Mars.