NASA's Perseverance Rover Successfully Collects Its 7th Sample

The Perseverance Rover recently collected its seventh Martian rock sample.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) recently reported that its Mars Rover, Perseverance, has collected its seventh core sample.

Details on the Rock Sample

The rock sample Perseverance acquired was drilled from another Martian rock within the Jezero Crater, which served as the rover's landing site in February 2021, per a Space.com article.

According to the Perseverance team's tweet, the Perseverance Rover will take one more rock sample before heading to the ancient river delta - the reason why NASA chose the crater as its landing site.

Perseverance's Mission

According to NASA's Mars 2020 Mission Page, Perseverance's mission is to find signs of ancient life on the Red Planet and collect samples of rock and regolith (broken rock and soil) to return to Earth for study and analysis.

The rover is also tasked to explore the Jezero Crater and assess ancient habitability.

Perseverance is also designed to demonstrate the technology needed for future robotic and human exploration in the future, per NASA's fact sheet on Perseverance's mission.

Currently, the rover and its companion helicopter, Ingenuity, are heading back to its landing site after exploring its south and west locales. Once there, it would be heading to the ancient river delta thought to house preserved signs of life as we know it, similar to those here on Earth.

However, the rover, and the Perseverance team by extension, intend to get one more rock sample from the crater before heading to the river delta.

Send by Space Mail

According to the European Space Agency (ESA), it is working with NASA to explore mission concepts for an international Mars Sample Return campaign between 2020 and 2030.

The resulting mission's goal is to acquire Perseverance's collection of rock samples and send it back to Earth for analysis and study.

ESA's concept of the return mission involves sending a Sample Return Lander to land near Persevarance's landing site. This lander will deploy a Sample Fetch Rover to find Perseverance and collect its samples once it does.

After which, the Sample Fetch Rover will return to its lander, load the samples into a single large canister on the Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV), which will liftoff from mars and carry the container into the planet's orbit.

The MAV will then wait for an Earth Return Orbiter, which will capture the canister containing the samples. The Orbiter will then seal the canister in a biocontainment system to prevent contaminating Earth with unsterilized material.

The Orbiter before being moved into an Earth Entry Capsule which will return to Earth, where it will release the entry capsule for the samples to end up in a specialised handling facility.

Navigating the Jezero Crater

As previously mentioned, Perseverance is accompanied by Ingenuity, a drone-like helicopter that was attached to Perseverance's belly during the rover's journey to the Red Planet.

The Ingenuity helicopter is a technology demonstration to test the first powered flight on Mars per NASA's Mars Exploration Program website. The helicopter has since completed 20 flights during its time on the planet, exceeding its expected lifespan by a factor of 4, according to Space.com.

Ingenuity's main task now is to capture airborne imagery that gives the Perseverance Team the necessary data to help navigate Perseverance through the Jezero Crater to the ancient river delta, per a previous iTechPost article.