NASA's Perseverance rover hit a snag while trying to capture its latest piece of rock from Mars, with a pebble-sized bit of debris stopping it from storing the sample. .

The Perseverance team, tweeting as the rover, wrote: 'I recently captured my sixth rock core and have encountered a new challenge. Seems some pebble-sized debris is obstructing my robotic arm from handing off the tube for sealing/storage.'.

NASA's Perseverance rover has been on the Red Planet since February 2021, and is slowly trundling through the Jezero Crater taking rock samples.

The SUV-sized vehicle has captured its sixth rock in total, but a piece of 'pebble-sized debris' stopped it from storing the sample.

The Perseverance team, tweeting as the rover, wrote: 'I recently captured my sixth rock core and have encountered a new challenge.

The team is confident that these are fragments of the cored rock that fell out of the sample tube at the time of Coring Bit Dropoff, and that they prevented the bit from connecting properly with the carousel. 

The team is confident that these are fragments of the cored rock that fell out of the sample tube at the time of Coring Bit Dropoff, and that they prevented the bit from connecting properly with the carousel

The rover will characterise the planet's geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith

Nasa's Mars 2020 rover (artist's impression) is searching for signs of ancient life on Mars in a bid to help scientists better understand how life evolved on our own planet

The $2.5 billion (£1.95 billion) Mars 2020 spaceship launched on July 30 with the rover and helicopter inside - and landed successfully on February 18, 2021

This concept art shows the Mars 2020 rover landing on the red planet via NASA's 'sky-crane' system