Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Perseverance rover deposits select rock and soil samples in sealed tubes on Mars’s surface for future missions to retrieve and bring back to Earth for detailed study.
NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover is preparing to drop off an initial cache of samples as part of the Mars Sample Return campaign.

The site for drop-off of 10 sample-filled tubes is called Three Forks, a flat and free of obstacles locale.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/USGS

Since Perseverance landed at Jezero Crater in 2021, the rover has explored over 8 miles (13 kilometers) and collected 14 samples with rock cores and martian air. There are 43 sample tubes carried to Mars.

Potential helicopter pickup

The deployment of 10 tubes to the surface is for potential future helicopter pickup, said Ken Farley, project scientist for the Mars 2020 (Perseverance) mission, during an October 27^th virtual meeting of the Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group (MEPAG).

Farley said that the Three Forks depot drop will start in roughly mid-November; an estimated 43 sols will be required to complete.

Newly revised Mars Sample Return campaign makes use of a set of machines, including use of helicopters, to collect Martian soil, rock and atmospheric specimens for return to Earth.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Creation of Three Forks Depot liberates Mars 2020 to continue to acquire the best possible cache for Mar Sample Return (MSR) in extended missions, Farley told the MEPAG gathering.

First cache of samples on the surface

The NASA/European Space Agency MSR effort calls for returning Mars samples to Earth in 2033. On October 19, the two space agencies endorsed the plan to deposit the first cache of samples on the surface.

The MSR project recently went through a reconfiguration of the campaign. It now includes two sample recovery helicopters instead of an additional “fetch” rover, along with its lander.

Credit: ESA – K. Lochtenberg

A recent assessment of Perseverance’s reliability and life expectancy increased confidence that the rover will be able to deliver samples to NASA’s Sample Retrieval Lander in 2030.

In case Perseverance is not able to bring the sample tubes to the Mars Accent Vehicle (MAV) location, two small helicopters deployed by the lander will fetch them. MAV is built to rocket off bits, pieces, and atmosphere of the Red Planet into Mars orbit.

Those samples are then transferred to the European Earth Return Orbiter for hauling them homeward to our planet.