Perseverance will soon begin stashing Martian sample tubes in a depot which will eventually hold 10 tubes deposited over around one month.
There are currently a number of rovers, landers, and orbiters exploring Mars, gathering more information than ever before about the planet’s environment and its history. But to understand more about this place and particularly whether there was ever life there, we need to bring samples back from Mars to Earth for analysis here. That’s what NASA aims to do over the next decade with its Mars Sample Return plan.
Perseverance will soon begin stashing these tubes in a “sample depot,” which will eventually hold 10 tubes deposited over around one month. The location for the depot had to be carefully chosen so it will be accessible by future missions, as the current plan is to have the samples retrieved either by rover or by helicopter.
Individual tubes also need to be carefully placed within the depot area. As each helicopter can only pick up one tube at a time, the tubes can’t simply be left in a big pile. Instead, each tube needs to be placed in its own location several meters wide, spaced in a zig-zag pattern. The need for precise placement is why it will take Perseverance around one month to place all the tubes.
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