NASA's Mars Perseverance Rover Deposits First Sample on the Red Planet's Surface

NASA's Mars Perseverance rover deposited its first titanium tube with a rock sample on the surface of the Red Planet on Wednesday, Dec. 21.

The rover will set down a total of 10 tubes at the "Three Forks" location over the course of the following two months, creating the first sample depot for humans on an extraterrestrial planet.

The recent move marks a significant first stage in NASA's Mars Sample Return efforts.

Mars Sample Return Campaign

Perseverance has been collecting duplicate samples from the mission's chosen rock targets. The rover presently possesses the remaining 17 samples that have been collected, with one atmospheric sample, according to NASA.

The rover would transfer samples to a future robotic lander based on the design of the Mars Sample Return campaign. The lander would then use a robotic arm to transfer the samples into a containment capsule that would be carried by a miniature rocket and launched into Mars orbit.

The sample will then be picked up by another spacecraft to safely return to our planet.

In the event that Perseverance is unable to deliver its samples, the depot will act as a fallback. Two Sample Recovery Helicopters would be dispatched to complete the task if ever this happens.

On January 31, 2022, a core of igneous rock the size of a chalk was taken from the "South Sétah" region of Mars' Jezero Crater and given the informal moniker "Malay."

It took over an hour for Perseverance's intricate Sampling and Caching System to remove the metal tube from the rover's belly.

The rover gave it one final look with its internal CacheCam before dropping the sample on a chosen area of Martian soil that stands at a height of around 3 feet (89 centimeters).

The 'Glove'

After determining that the tube had fallen, the NASA crew set up the WATSON camera, which is attached to Perseverance's 7-foot (2-meter) robotic arm, to look beneath the rover and ensure that the tube had not slid into the path of the wheels.

NASA notes that each tube has a flat end component called a "glove" so that upcoming missions can easily retrieve it. The team behind the tube needed to make sure that it was not standing on its end.

During testing with Perseverance's Earthly counterpart at JPL's Mars Yard, this happened less than 5% of the time. The mission has created a set of commands for Perseverance to delicately knock the tube over with a portion of its robotic arm in case it lands standing on its end.