UNITED STATES: The Mars Perseverance rover adds another accomplishment to its resume. The rover successfully established the first sample depot on Mars after releasing 10 titanium tubes that will be returned to Earth on upcoming trips.
To be investigated later on Earth, ten sample tubes that capture different aspects of Martian geology have been left on the surface of Mars.
The project was finished in less than six weeks as NASA prepared a mission to bring samples back from the Red Planet for in-depth investigation.
The samples were placed in the precisely prepared depot at the “Three Forks” portion of Jezero Crater, which is supposed to be the location of an old lake.
As part of the campaign, half of the depot samples will remain inside Perseverance, which will be the primary vehicle utilised to transport samples to a Sample Retrieval Lander, serving as a backup set.
According to astrobiologists, the igneous and sedimentary rock cores offer a great cross-section of the geologic events that occurred in Jezero soon after the crater’s formation roughly 4 billion years ago.
Aside from these rock samples, the rover has also taken an atmosphere sample to check for contamination of the samples by substances that may have travelled with the rover from Earth.
“Perseverance is currently travelling up the delta as we are approaching the Three Forks depot from behind. “The Hawksbill Gap route that we previously investigated will be used for our ascent,” Rick Welch, the deputy project manager for Perseverance, stated in a statement.
“Once we reach the geologic level that the study team refers to as “Rocky Top,” we will be in an uncharted area and begin investigating the Delta Top,” he continued.
The rover is about to start the Delta Top Campaign after finishing the Delta Front Campaign. One of the first places the rover will go during the next science mission is called the “Curvilinear Unit.”
The sediments that make up the unit were deposited millions of years ago in a bend in one of Jezero’s inflowing river channels.
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