NASA’s Perseverance mission dropped its first cache of precious rock samples on the sands of Mars, leaving behind a record of material that a future mission could bring back to Earth.
Key points
- The rover’s contribution to seeking “ancient microbial life” in an old river delta, as NASA’s Jet Propulsion said in an update, will include 10 titanium tubes deposited at this location, nicknamed “Three Forks.”
- It is humanity’s first sample depot on another planet.
- The depot marks a historic early step in the Mars Sample Return campaign.
- The first sample to drop was a chalk-size core of igneous rock informally named “Malay,” which was collected on Jan. 31, 2022, in a region of Mars’ Jezero Crater called “South Séítah.”
- A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on 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 cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust).
- Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with 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 Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.
