Santa arrived on Mars this year.
There is a record of material that a future mission could bring back to Earth after NASA's Perseverance mission dropped its first cache of precious rock samples on the sands of Mars. It's a crucial moment in the search for life on Mars, according to a statement from NASA.
The titanium tubes nicknamed "Three Forks" will be deposited at this location, as NASA said in an update (opens in new tab).
If schedules hold, either Perseverance or two helicopters will ferry rocky tubes like this in Jezero Crater to a waiting ship Sometime in the 2030s, if schedules hold, either Perseverance or two helicopters will ferry rocky tubes like this in Jezero Crater to a waiting ship
Perseverance Mars rover will begin caching samples for future return to Earth.
Perseverance collects twin samples at each location and its mission calls for it to do the delivery itself using the set of cache inside the rover. The backup tubes could be picked up by the helicopter.
The tubes will be sent to space and the samples will be returned to Earth. The shipment will be the first time rocks from Red Planet have made it to Earth.
Water is one of the key ingredients of life on Mars. Mars was rich with water in the past, despite the planet's dried up appearance today.
"Ground truth" is where Perseverance comes in. Sending the samples back to Earth will allow laboratories to review the bits for signs of ancient life, since a rover can only carry so many instruments.
The first sample to hit the regolith is roughly the size of a piece of chalk and was collected on January 31st. Scientists said weeks before they took the sample that they had found organics in the same area.
The Perseverance took about an hour to remove the tube from its belly. Engineers on Earth looked at the area to make sure they didn't accidentally wheel over the tube as Perseverance drove away.
The Perseverance rover's 1st year on Mars was photographed.
NASA had a contingency plan in place if the tube ended up upright in the sand, even though the pictures showed the tube was out of the way. Agency officials wrote that the mission had written a series of commands for Perseverance to knock the tube over with part of the turret at the end of its robotic arm.
Engineers tested the tubeflattening procedure with a Perseverance-like rover inside the "Mars yard" at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The mission has a backup because of the small amount of upright deposits that happen.
The end of Perseverance's prime mission is just a few weeks away. The mission extension will be based on the rover's science publications and contributions.
"Just as we're starting our cache, we're also closing this first chapter of the mission, so it's a nice alignment," Rick said in the same statement.
The co-author of Why Am I Taller is Elizabeth Howell. A book about space medicine is in the works. Follow us on social media, like us on Facebook (opens in new tab)
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