Perseverance Rover Displays Mars Sample Collection

The Perseverance Mars rover shared a panorama of its recently finished sample store, marking a significant achievement for the mission and the first sample collection by humans on an alien planet. The picture, which was assembled from 368 photographs delivered to Earth, shows the meticulous positioning and mapping of 10 titanium tubes over the course of more than a month.

One of the tubes is an air sample, while the other two are "witness" tubes. Of those tubes, eight are filled with rock and regolith (broken rock and dust). On January 31, 2023, the rover took a picture of the depot using the Mastcam-Z camera mounted atop its mast, or "head." The hue has been altered to roughly depict how the Martian surface might seem to the human eye.

Perseverance's Portrait of the Sample Depot: An annotated version of the portrait captured by NASA’s Perseverance shows the location of the 10 sample tubes in the depot. The “Amalik” sample closest to the rover was about 10 feet (3 meters) away; the “Mageik” and “Malay” samples farthest away were approximately 197 feet (60 meters) from the rover. 
Credits: NASA/JPL-

The Mars Sample Return program, a collaboration between NASA and ESA, seeks to return samples from Mars to Earth for closer examination. The depot is a backup collection of materials that might be collected in the future by the campaign. On December 21, 2022, the rover started constructing the depot, carefully spacing the tubes in case they were to be recovered at a later time.

The main tubes are located in Perseverance's belly, and as part of the campaign, Perseverance would transmit these, along with any other samples collected throughout the mission, to a Sample Retrieval Lander. Samples might be recovered from the depot in the event that the rover's ability to transport tubes to the lander directly were to be compromised. 

The depot was constructed by Perseverance at "Three Forks," a place inside Jezero Crater. The crater was formed by a river flowing into it billions of years ago, delivering silt that resulted in the steep, fan-shaped delta that the rover will drive up in the coming months.

WATSON's Photomontage of Mars Sample Depot: This photomontage shows each of the sample tubes shortly after they were deposited onto the surface by NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover, as viewed by the WATSON (Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering) camera on the end of the rover’s 7-foot-long (2-meter-long) robotic arm.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.

Shown, from left, are “Malay,” “Mageik,” “Crosswind Lake,” “Roubion,” “Coulettes,” “Montdenier,” “Bearwallow,” “Skyland,” “Atsah,” and “Amalik.” Deposited from Dec. 21, 2022, to Jan. 28, 2023, these samples make up the sample depot Perseverance built at “Three Forks,” a location within Mars’ Jezero Crater.

The surface of Mars is now cold, dry, and generally unfriendly to life, but in its prehistoric past, it was probably more like Earth and may have sustained microbial life, if it had ever existed on the Red Planet. The samples that Perseverance is gathering could enable researchers to ascertain whether life has ever existed in places like Jezero Crater.