This story is part Welcome to Marsour series exploring the red planet.
It took NASA’s Perseverance rover less than six weeks to create the first sample drop on another world. NASA’s JPL announced on Saturday that the rover had successfully placed 10 tubes on Martian soil according to a specific scheme that would allow a future mission to pick them up if necessary.
Percy’s work was in service of a big idea: bringing pieces of Mars back to Earth for further study by scientists. Researchers hope they could tell if the Red Planet once harbored microbial life. The sample deposition is an important part of the upcoming Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission to bring Martian rocks to Earth in the 2030s.
The 10 samples have names. This map shows where each is in the sample repository on Mars.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA called the completion of the repository a major milestone that involved planning and precision navigation to ensure the tubes could be retrieved by two MSR mission helicopters. The rover collected samples in pairs, so it could drop one on the ground and keep the other on board. NASA expects Percy to meet the MSR lander in person to deliver his samples, but if something gets in the way, helicopters and the sample drop will be the fallback.
The tubes are mostly filled with rock, but the rover also dropped a sample of the Martian atmosphere and a “control” tube this could help scientists determine if there has been accidental contamination of Earth. The witness tubes go through the sampling and sealing movements, but are not filled with rock or soil.
The rock samples that Percy collected reflect the varied geology of Jezero Crater and its water history. The rover collected cores of igneous (volcanic) and sedimentary rocks.
The completion of the deposit marks the end of a major task and the start of new exploration as Perseverance ascends an ancient river delta. The rover has been in residence on Mars since early 2021. It has already proven itself as a powerhouse of science. His rock samples could revolutionize our understanding of life in our solar system. Good job, Percy.
