- 4279 - MARS - sample pick up? A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including caching samples that may contain 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 be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith.
------------------------- 4279 - MARS - sample pick up?
- Perseverance Mars
rover took a selfie with several of the 10 sample tubes it deposited at a
sample depot it is creating within an area of Jezero Crater nicknamed
"Three Forks."
-
- Ten sample tubes,
capturing an amazing variety of Martian geology, have been deposited on Mars’
surface so they could be studied on Earth in the future.
-
- Less than six
weeks after it began, construction of the first sample depot on another world
is complete. Confirmation that NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover successfully
dropped the 10th and final tube planned for the depot was received Sunday,
January 29, 2023.
-
- This major
milestone involved precision planning and navigation to ensure the tubes could
be safely recovered in the future by the NASA-ESA (European Space Agency) Mars
Sample Return campaign aims to bring Mars samples to Earth for closer study.
-
- This was the 690th
Martian day, or sol, of the mission.
Throughout its science campaigns, the rover has been taking a pair of
samples from rocks the mission team deems scientifically significant. One
sample from each pair taken so far now sits in the carefully arranged depot in
the “Three Forks” region of Jezero Crater.
-
- The depot samples
will serve as a backup set while the other half remain inside Perseverance,
which would be the primary means to convey samples to a Sample Retrieval Lander
as part of the campaign.
-
- Mission scientists
believe the igneous and sedimentary rock cores provide an excellent cross
section of the geologic processes that took place in Jezero shortly after the
crater’s formation almost 4 billion years ago.
-
- The rover also
deposited an atmospheric sample and what’s called a “witness” tube, which is
used to determine if samples being collected might be contaminated with
materials that traveled with the rover from Earth.
-
- Perseverance Mars
rover dropped each of its 10 samples, one half of every pair taken so far, so
that a future mission could pick them up. After five weeks of work, the sample
depot was completed January 24, 2023, the 687th day, or sol, of the mission.
-
- The titanium tubes
were deposited on the surface in an intricate zigzag pattern, with each sample
about 15 to 50 feet apart from one another to ensure they could be safely
recovered. Adding time to the depot-creation process, the team needed to
precisely map the location of each 7-inch-long tube and glove combination so
that the samples could be found even if covered with dust.
-
- The depot is on
flat ground near the base of the raised, fan-shaped ancient river delta that
formed long ago when a river flowed into a lake there. Perseverance is now headed up the
delta. It will make an ascent via the
‘Hawksbill Gap’ route previously explored. Once it passes the geologic unit the
science team calls ‘Rocky Top,’ it will be in new territory and begin exploring
the Delta Top.
-
- Passing the “Rocky
Top” outcrop represents the end of the rover’s Delta Front Campaign and the
beginning of the rover’s “Delta Top Campaign” because of the geologic
transition that takes place at that level.
The base of the delta up to the level where Rocky Top is located, the
rocks appear to have been deposited in a lake environment.
-
- And those just
above Rocky Top appear to have been created in or at the end of a Martian river
flowing into the lake. As we ascend the delta into a river setting, we expect
to move into rocks that are composed of larger grains from sand to large
boulders. Those materials likely originated in rocks outside of Jezero, eroded
and then washed into the crater.
-
- One of the first
stops the rover will make during the new science campaign is at a location the
science team calls the “Curvilinear Unit.” Essentially a Martian sandbar, the
unit is made of sediment that eons ago was deposited in a bend in one of
Jezero’s inflowing river channels. The Curvilinear Unit will be an excellent
location to hunt for intriguing outcrops of sandstone and perhaps mudstone, and
to get a glimpse at the geological processes beyond the walls of Jezero Crater.
-
- A NASA missions, in
cooperation with ESA, would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed
samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.
-
-
December 18, 2023
MARS -
sample pick up?
4279
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Tuesday, December 19, 2023 ---------------------------------
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