NASA’s Perseverance rover deposits first sample on Mars surface – NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover
NASA’s Perseverance rover deposits first sample on Mars surface – NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover
Perseverance deposits its first sample on the Martian surface: Once the Perseverance team confirmed that the first sample tube was on the surface, they positioned the WATSON camera on the end of the rover’s robotic arm to look below the rover, checking to make sure that the tube had not rolled into the path of the rover. wheels. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS. Download the image ›
Filled with rock, the sample tube will be one of 10 forming a reservoir of tubes that could be considered for a trip to Earth by the Mars sample return campaign.
A titanium tube containing a rock sample rests on the surface of the Red Planet after being placed on December 21 by NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover. Over the next two months, the rover will deposit a total of 10 tubes at the location, dubbed “Three Forks,” building humanity’s first sample repository on another planet. The deposit marks an initial historical step in the Mars sample return campaign.
Perseverance has been taking duplicate samples of the rock targets that the mission selects. The rover currently has the other 17 samples (including an atmospheric sample) taken so far in its belly. Based on the architecture of the Mars Sample Return campaign, the rover would deliver samples to a future robotic lander. The lander, in turn, would use a robotic arm to place the samples in a containment pod aboard a small rocket that would fly to Mars orbit, where another spacecraft would capture the sample container and would return it safely to Earth.
The deposit will serve as a backup if Perseverance is unable to deliver your samples. In this case, a couple of sample recovery helicopters will be required to finish the job.
The first sample he dropped was a core the size of chalk igneous rock informally called “Malai”, which was collected on January 31, 2022 in a region of the Martian Jezero crater called “South Séítah”. The perseverance complex Sampling system and cache memory it took nearly an hour to retrieve the metal tube from inside the rover’s belly, to see it for the last time with its insides CacheCamand drop the sample approximately 3 feet (89 centimeters) onto a carefully selected patch of the Martian surface.
But the job wasn’t done for engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which built Perseverance and is leading the mission. Once they confirmed the tube had fallen, the team placed the WATSON camera on the end of Perseverance’s 7-foot-long (2-meter-long) robotic arm to look under the rover, checking that the tube had not rolled into the path of the rover’s wheels.
They also wanted to make sure the tube hadn’t landed in such a way that it was standing on its end (each tube has a flat end piece called a “glove” to make it easier for future missions to pick up). This happened less than 5% of the time during testing with Perseverance Earth twin at JPL’s Mars Yard. Should it happen on Mars, the mission has written a series of commands for Perseverance to carefully touch the tube with part of the turret on the end of its robotic arm.
In the coming weeks, they will have other opportunities to see if Perseverance needs to use the technique as the rover deposits more samples into the Three Forks cache.
“Seeing our first sample on the ground is a huge cornerstone of our main mission period, which ends on January 6,” said Rick Welch, Perseverance deputy project manager at JPL. “It’s a nice alignment that, just as we’re starting our cache, we’re also closing this first chapter of the mission.”
More information about the mission
A key goal for the Perseverance mission to Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize 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 store Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust).
Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with the ESA (European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.
The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s lunar exploration approach to Mars, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the red planet.
JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages the operations of the Perseverance rover.
For more information on perseverance:
mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/
News Media contacts
Andrew Good / DC Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-2433 / 818-393-9011
[email protected] / [email protected]
Karen Fox / Alana Johnson
NASA Headquarters, Washington
301-286-6284 / 202-358-1501
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