Santa got here early to Mars this 12 months.
NASA’s Perseverance mission dropped its first cache of valuable rock samples on the sands of Mars, forsaking a document of fabric {that a} future mission may deliver again to Earth. It is a key second within the seek for life on Mars, NASA officers mentioned in an announcement on Wednesday (Dec. 21).
The rover’s contribution to in search of “historic microbial life” in an outdated river delta, as NASA’s Jet Propulsion mentioned in an update (opens in new tab), will embrace 10 titanium tubes deposited at this location, nicknamed “Three Forks.”
Someday within the 2030s, if schedules maintain, both Perseverance or two helicopters (much like the presently flying Ingenuity Mars helicopter that finished its 37th flight days in the past) will ferry rocky tubes like this in Jezero Crater to a ready ship.Â
Associated: Perseverance Mars rover to start caching samples for future return to Earth
This tube is a backup depot, nevertheless; Perseverance collects twin samples at every location and its mission requires it to do the supply itself, utilizing the set of caches contained in the rover. But when mandatory, the helicopters may very well be known as upon to choose up the backup tubes left on the Martian floor.
Nonetheless the tubes get delivered, a spacecraft will launch them to space and hand the samples off to a ready orbiter to return the Martian samples to Earth. Apart from a couple of meteorites carved off of Mars that fell onto our planet, the historic cargo will signify the primary time Pink Planet rocks have made it to Earth.
One of many key elements of life seems plentiful on Mars, or no less than it was in historic instances: Water. Enormous canyons, huge icebergs and potential underwater reservoirs counsel Mars was rich with water within the historic previous, regardless of the planet’s dried-up and dusty look at present.Â
However whether or not there was sufficient to help life requires “floor reality,” which is the place Perseverance is available in. A rover can solely carry so many devices with it, nevertheless; sending the samples again to Earth will permit total laboratories the prospect to overview the Martian bits for signatures of historic life.
The primary pattern to hit the regolith is roughly the scale of a bit of chalk, collected from an igneous rock nicknamed “Malay” on Jan. 31 in a area known as “South SéÃtah.” South SéÃtah is itself vital; scientists introduced weeks earlier than taking the pattern that that they had found organics, a potential ingredient of life, in the identical space.
The car-sized Perseverance took about an hour to spit out the tube from its stomach, the place the sampling and caching system resides. The tube fell three toes (89 centimeters) to a flat spot of the Martian floor as deliberate, and engineers on Earth imaged the realm to ensure they do not by accident wheel over it as Perseverance drives away.Â
In pictures: 12 amazing pictures from the Perseverance rover’s 1st year on Mars
The images got here again exhibiting the tube was nicely out of the way in which and flat, however NASA did have a contingency plan in place in case the tube ended up upright within the sand. “The mission has written a collection of instructions for Perseverance to fastidiously knock the tube over with a part of the turret on the finish of its robotic arm,” company officers wrote.
Engineers examined the tube-flattening process with a Perseverance-like rover contained in the “Mars yard,” an tailored sandbox on the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California the place machines are examined in situations much like the Pink Planet. Upright deposits occurred about 5 p.c of the time in these simulations, which is why the mission has backup.
The milestone drop is occurring simply weeks earlier than the top of Perseverance’s prime mission on Jan. 6, 2023; the mission will notch two Earth years on the Martian floor on Feb. 18. The rover will proceed roving by way of a mission extension, based mostly on its science publications and contributions like this to the pattern return.
“It is a good alignment that, simply as we’re beginning our cache, we’re additionally closing this primary chapter of the mission,” Rick Welch, Perseverance’s deputy mission supervisor at JPL, mentioned in the identical assertion.
Elizabeth Howell is the co-author of “Why Am I Taller (opens in new tab)?” (ECW Press, 2022; with Canadian astronaut Dave Williams), a e book about space medication. Comply with her on Twitter @howellspace (opens in new tab). Comply with us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) or Facebook (opens in new tab).
