Perseverance Drops Its First Sample On The Surface Of Mars: After the Perseverance team confirmed that the first sample tube was at the surface, they positioned the WATSON camera at the end of the rover’s robotic arm to face the bottom of the rover and checked to make sure the tube had not entered orbit. wheels. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech. Download image ›
The rock-filled sample tube will be one of 10 tubes forming a tube storage that could be considered for a trip to Earth by the Mars Specimen Return campaign.
A titanium tube containing the rock sample rests on the surface of the Red Planet after being placed there. 21 in December By NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover. Over the next two months, the rover will drop a total of 10 tubes into the so-called “Three Forks” location, building humanity’s first sample warehouse on another planet. The warehouse marks a historic early step. Mars Sample Return campaign.
Perseverance takes dual samples from the quest-selected rock targets. mobile currently other 17 examples (including an atmospheric sample) has been taken from the abdomen so far. Based on the architecture of the Mars Sample Return campaign, the rover will deliver samples to a future robotic lander. The lander would use a robotic arm to place samples in a containment capsule on a small rocket that would launch into Mars orbit, where another spacecraft would capture the sample container and safely return it to Earth.
If Perseverance fails to deliver samples, the warehouse will act as a backup. In this case, a pair of Sample Rescue Helicopters will be called to finish the job.
The first specimen to fall was a chalk-sized core. volcanic rock Unofficially called “Malay” and collected on January 1, 2022, Mars’ region of Crater Lake named “South Séítah”. perseverance complex Sampling and Caching System It took almost an hour to remove the metal tube from inside the rover’s abdomen, inspect it one last time with its interior Cache Cameraand drop the sample on a carefully selected patch of Martian surface from a height of roughly 3 feet (89 centimeters).
But the work wasn’t done for the engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, who built Perseverance and led the mission. After confirming that the tube had fallen, the team Watsons The camera at the end of Perseverance’s 2 meter (2 meter long) robotic arm looks under the rover to make sure the tube is not getting in the way of the rover’s wheels.
They also wanted to make sure the tube didn’t come down to rest on the end (each tube has a flat end piece called a “glove” to make it easier to pick up by future missions). This occurred less than 5% of the time during testing with Perseverance. earthly twin At JPL’s Mars Yard. In the event that it was on Mars, the mission wrote Perseverance a series of commands to carefully knock over the pipe with part of the tower at the end of its robotic arm.
In the coming weeks, Perseverance will have other opportunities to see if it should use this technique, as the rover drops more samples into the Three Forks cache.
“Seeing our first instance on the ground is a great milestone for our main tenure, which ends Jan. 6,” said Rick Welch, Perseverance’s assistant project manager at JPL. rapport.”
More About the Mission
An important target for Perseverance’s mission to Mars, astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and will be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith (cracked rock and dust).
Subsequent NASA missions would send spacecraft to Mars, in collaboration with ESA (European Space Agency), 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 approach to exploration from the Moon to Mars. Artemis Moon missions to help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.
Led by Caltech for NASA in Pasadena, California, JPL built and oversaw operations of the Perseverance rover.
For more information on perseverance:
mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/
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Andrew Good / DC Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.
818-393-2433 / 818-393-9011
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Karen Fox / Alana Johnson
NASA Headquarters, Washington
301-286-6284 / 202-358-1501
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