Among the dozens of NASA missions active at any given time is Perseverance, the rover currently roaming Mars collecting whatever Martian rocks it can. In the two years its been on the planet, Perseverance has captured plenty of samples, with NASA releasing a picture Tuesday showing off the sample tubes that have been collected. Since beginning to build its collection depot last December, Perseverance has collected 10 tubes.
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Though the samples have already started being collected, they won’t make it back to Earth anytime soon. As it stands now, a craft is set to launch in 2026 to head to Mars and pick up the samples. If all goes to plan, the samples would then make their return here sometime in 2031.
“The samples Perseverance has been collecting will provide a key chronology for the formation of Jezero Crater,” Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, said last year. “Each one is carefully considered for its scientific value.”
“Right now, we take what we know about the age of impact craters on the Moon and extrapolate that to Mars,” added Katie Stack Morgan, Perseverance’s deputy project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “Bringing back a sample from this heavily cratered surface in Jezero could provide a tie-point to calibrate the Mars crater dating system independently, instead of relying solely on the lunar one.”
Perseverance has been accompanied by Ingenuity, a helicopter that has provided NASA with additional data. Though it was only intended to fly five times, Ingenuity has successfully completed a whopping 42 flights, allowing researchers to help plot a course for the Perseverance rover across the planet.
