Perseverance culminates the first sample repository on another world

30 Jan. () –

Less than six weeks after startconstruction by NASA’s Perseverance rover of the first sample repository on another world has been completed.

Mission controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in southern California, confirmed at 01:00 UTC on January 30 that the rover had successfully dropped the tenth and final tube intended for the repository.

This significant milestone involved precision planning and navigation to ensure that the tubes could be safely recovered in the future by the NASA-ESA Mars Sample Return campaign, whose goal is to bring samples from Mars to Earth for closer study.

Throughout its scientific campaigns, the rover has taken a couple of rock samples that the mission team considers scientifically significant. One sample of each pair taken so far is now in the carefully arranged deposit in the “Three Forks” region of Jezero Crater, reports NASA.

The samples in the repository will serve as a reserve while the other half remains inside the Perseverance, which would be the primary means of transporting the samples to a Sample Retrieval Lander as part of the campaign.

Mission scientists believe that the igneous and sedimentary rock cores provide an excellent cross-section of the geological processes that took place at Jezero shortly after the crater’s formation nearly 4 billion years ago. The rover also deposited an atmospheric sample and what is called a “core” tube, which is used to determine if the samples being collected could be contaminated with materials that traveled with the rover from Earth.

Titanium tubes were deposited on the surface following an intricate zigzag pattern, with each sample separated from each other between 5 and 15 meters to ensure they could be safely recovered. In addition to the time it took to create the reservoir, the team had to precisely map out the location of each 18.6-centimeter-long tube and glove (adapter) combination in order to find the samples even when they were covered in dust.

The deposit is located on level ground, near the base of the ancient fan-shaped river delta that formed long ago when a river emptied into a lake.