How will the samples collected by NASA’s Perseverance rover be sent to Earth? NASA has made an announcement explaining what is being wondered about.
First, a sample store will be set up on Mars, where it will store Martian rock and gas samples until sometime in the 2030s, a mission to the Red Planet to bring back samples to Earth.
Sent to the Red Planet to search for signs of ancient microbial life, Perseverance has been roaming Jezero Crater and exploring its nooks since landing in February 2021. The wheeled robotic geologist has a variety of tools to collect and analyze rock samples by drilling through the Martian surface, which looks particularly interesting. These collected materials are stored in sample tubes.
Perseverance traveled about 13 kilometers to Mars, collecting 14 rock samples and one atmospheric sample. Now he has to drop some of those tubes into a private and safe spot on Mars.
While the rover has yet to complete its science work, NASA and European Space Agency (ESA) officials are already planning how to bring Mars material back to Earth for further study. They plan to build a kind of repository, a flat area suitable for landing, in an area called the Three Forks, located at the base of an ancient river delta in the crater.
Perseverance took two samples from each spot while collecting samples. One set of samples will be left at the storage point and the other set of samples will remain on the reconnaissance vehicle. Once the lander departs from Earth and reaches Three Forks, the rover will go to its new “friend” and a robotic arm will retrieve the tubes from Perseverance and load them onto the lander. Also, drones sent from Earth will take off and start picking up tubes from the warehouse. In this way, the warehouse will effectively act as a backup sample source should the reconnaissance unloading go wrong.
If all goes well, the samples will be brought back to Earth using a small rocket.
“Choosing the first repository on Mars makes this exploration campaign very real and tangible. Now we have a place to revisit with examples waiting for us out there,” said David Parker, ESA’s director of Human and Robotic Exploration. The first repository of samples could be considered a major mitigation step for the Mars Specimen Recovery Mission.”
If NASA and ESA work together on the mission to Mars and succeed in returning the samples intact, we will have the first scientific samples brought to Earth from another planet and studied.
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