The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)'s Perseverance, the newly-built Mars rover, is now up to a major project once the device lands on Mars. In 2021, Perseverance will collect Mars materials like Martian rocks on the planet and fly it back to Earth for scientists to study. Of course, the Mars Rover will not be the only one working on getting the rocks, but other space crafts will be sent to deliver the Martian rocks back to Earth-- all scheduled to happen in 2031.
NASA: In 2031, Earth will meet Mars!
Perseverance is not yet being launched in space until July 17. For those of you asking, Mars rover will do the space exploration on the planet. All the items, views, and images that can be collected from the mysterious Red planet will be gathered by the device. As reported, it will have to fill up 30 geological sample tubes from Mars.
Nature reported that after Perseverance successfully lands on Feb. 18, 2021, NASA and European Space Agency (ESA) will be responsible for the other necessary space crafts needed to collect Martian rocks from the device.
"This is by no means a simple task,' said Jim Watzin, head of NASA's Mars exploration program in Washington DC. "But we have kept it as simple as possible."
"What we can learn about Mars in our own laboratories is going to be fantastic," said Michael Meyer, lead scientist for the Mars exploration program at NASA headquarters in Washington DC.
How will this work?
Here's how the process of Mars rock-transporting works. Since Perseverance will be launched to Mars in 2021, NASA and ESA will simultaneously build another two space crafts that will fly out in 2026. The first one will be delivered straight to Mars in 2028. This spacecraft will launch another rover that will collect the rocks that Perseverance got from the past years.
The second spacecraft will wait outside the atmosphere of the Red planet. The first one will fly out on Mars and send the collected rocks to the second spacecraft. Once the transfer is done scheduled in 2031, the second spacecraft will return to Earth with the gathered samples from the planet.
Mars rocks will cost a lot
As per NASA and ESA, committing to this plan is now a must. After all, once this mission turns successful, it will the very first time that Earth will see and have the first-hand experiment to the Martian rocks.
Unfortunately, both agencies did not answer how much this operation will costs. Daily Mail UK, though, explains that it could costs billions of dollars from each space agency since both of them will create two additional space crafts during the mission.
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