Six weeks after the first rock sample from the Red Planet was deposited on the surface of Mars, the Perseverance rover has deposited the tenth and final tube, NASA confirmed. The US space agency speaks of a “great milestone” that involved “precision planning and navigation to ensure that, in the future, the tubes can be safely recovered.”
The samples deposited by Perseverance will have to be collected so they can be returned to Earth and analyzed by scientists, looking for signs of life on Mars.
Throughout its time on the red planet, Perseverance has collected rock samples, which are now deposited in the “Three Forks” region of Jezero Crater.
The scientists believe that the collected rock cores provide “an excellent cross-section of the geological processes that took place at Jezero shortly after the crater formed nearly four billion years ago.”
The robot also deposited an “atmospheric sample” (called a “core tube”), which will be used to determine whether the collected samples may be contaminated with materials that traveled from Earth with the robot.
The titanium tubes were deposited on the surface in a zigzag pattern, with each sample placed between 5 and 15 meters apart to ensure they “can be safely retrieved.”
With the goal of finding signs of life on the red planet, the plan is for Perseverance to deliver the samples to a probe in the future, which will place them aboard a small rocket to orbit Mars. In turn, another spacecraft will pick up the sample container and return it to Earth.
Source: TSF
