Less than six weeks after it began, construction of the first sample repository on another planet has been completed. Confirmation that NASA’s Mars rover Perseverance successfully dropped the 10th and final tube planned for the repository was received around 5 pm Pacific time (8 pm ET) on Sunday, January 29. by mission controllers at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in southern California.
This important milestone required precision planning and navigation to ensure the tubes can be safely recovered in the future through the NASA/ESA Mars Sample Return campaign. ), which aims to bring samples from Mars to Earth for more detailed study.
Throughout its scientific campaigns, this rover has been taking pairs of rock samples that the mission team considers scientifically significant. One sample of each pair taken so far is found in the carefully arranged deposit in the “Three Forks” region of Jezero crater. The repository samples will serve as a backup, while the other half will remain within Perseverance, which would be the primary means of transporting them to a sample recovery lander as part of the campaign.
The WATSON camera on the Perseverance rover obtained this image of the tenth and final tube to be mobilized during the creation of the first sample repository on another planet, on January 28, 2023, the 690th Martian day, or sol, of the mission.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
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 known as a “core” tube, which is used to determine whether the collected samples might be contaminated with materials that traveled with the rover from Earth.
The titanium tubes were deposited on the surface in an intricate zigzag pattern, with each sample about 5 to 15 meters (15 to 50 feet) apart to ensure they can be safely retrieved. Adding time to the repository creation process, the team needed to accurately map the location of each tube and glove (adapter), both with a combined length of 18.6 centimeters (7 inches), so that the samples could be found, even if they were covered in dust. The deposit lies on flat ground near the base of an ancient, elevated, fan-shaped river delta that formed long ago when a river emptied into a lake at that location.
This map shows the locations where Perseverance, NASA’s Mars Rover, dropped 10 samples so a future mission could pick them up. After more than five weeks of work, the sample repository was completed on January 28, 2023, the 690th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. Light green lines mark the rover’s tracks.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
“With the Three Forks deposit in our rear view mirror, Perseverance is now heading toward the delta,” said Rick Welch, deputy project manager for Perseverance at JPL. “We will make our ascent via the ‘Hawksbill Gap’ route that we explored earlier. Once we pass the geological unit that the science team calls ‘Rocky Top’, we will be in new territory and begin to explore the top of the delta”.
Next scientific campaign
Passing the rocky outcrop of Rocky Top represents the end of the rover’s Delta Front campaign and the beginning of its Delta Top campaign, due to the geologic transition taking place at that level.
“We found that, from the base of the delta to the level where Rocky Top is, the rocks appear to have been deposited in a lacustrine environment,” said Ken Farley, Perseverance project scientist at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). “And the ones just above Rocky Top appear to have been created within or at the end of a Martian river that empties into the lake. As we move up the delta towards a fluvial environment, we expect to move towards rocks composed of larger grains, from sand to large boulders. Those materials probably originated in rocks outside of Jezero, eroded away, and then washed up into the crater.”
One of the first stops the rover will make during the new science campaign is at a place the science team calls the “Curvilinear Unit.” The unit, which is basically a Martian sandbar, is made of sediments that were deposited eons ago in a bend in one of the tributaries of the Jezero River. The science team believes that the Curvilinear Unit will be an excellent place to search for intriguing outcrops of sandstone and perhaps shale, and to take a look at the geological processes that occurred beyond the walls of Jezero Crater.
More about the mission
A key goal for the Perseverance Mars mission is astrobiology, which includes storing samples that could contain signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the geology and climate of this planet in the past, pave the way for human exploration of the red planet, and be the first mission to collect and store Martian rocks and regolith.
Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA, 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 the Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare humanity for exploration of the red planet. JPL, which is managed by Caltech for NASA, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.
For more information about Perseverance, visit the website: https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/
Read this story in English here.