NASA rover Perseverance collects first Martian rock sample
Future missions to Mars, to be jointly conducted by NASA and the European Space Agency, are planned to retrieve these specimens and return them to Earth.
Perseverance (photo credit: REUTERS)
NASA's Mars science rover Perseverance has collected and stashed
away the first of numerous mineral samples that the US space agency
hopes to retrieve from the surface of the Red Planet for analysis on
Earth.
Tools
attached to Perseverance and operated by mission specialists from NASA's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) near Los Angeles drilled a rock core
slightly thicker than a pencil from an ancient Martian lake bed, then
hermetically sealed it in a titanium specimen tube inside the rover.
The feat, accomplished on Sept. 1 and publicly confirmed by NASA
late on Monday, marked the first such mineral sample obtained from the
surface of another planet, according to the space agency.
NASA chief and former astronaut Bill Nelson hailed it as "a momentous achievement."
The
space agency plans to collect as many as 43 mineral samples over the
next few months from the floor of Jerezo Crater, a wide basin where
scientists think water flowed and microbial life may have flourished
billions of years ago.
The
six-wheeled, SUV-sized vehicle is also expected to explore walls of
sediment deposited at the foot of a remnant river delta once etched into
a corner of the crater and considered a prime spot for study.
Mineral collection is the heart of the $2.7 billion Perseverance project.
Two
future missions to Mars, to be jointly conducted by NASA and the
European Space Agency, are planned to retrieve those specimens in the
next decade and return them to Earth, where astrobiologists will examine
them for signs of tiny fossilized organisms.
Ingenuity
Mars Helicopter flies over Mars in an undated illustration provided by
Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/Handout (credit: NASA/JPL-CALTECH/HANDOUT VIA REUTERS)
Such fossils would represent the first conclusive proof that life has ever existed beyond Earth.
Perseverance,
the fifth and by far most sophisticated rover NASA has sent to Mars
since its first, Sojourner, arrived in 1997, landed in Jerezo Crater in
February after a 293 million-mile flight from Earth.
Success
of the first sample collection, taken from a flat, briefcase-sized rock
using the rotary-percussive drill at the end of Perseverance's robotic
arm, was verified through imagery taken by the rover's cameras as the
sample was measured, cataloged, and stored, NASA said.
The
rover's sampling and caching system, consisting of more than 3,000
parts, was described by JPL's interim director, Larry James, as "the
most complex mechanism ever sent into space."
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