Will the mission to collect rock samples from Mars and bring them back to Earth reveal traces of ancient life? Perseverance, NASA’s Mars rover, has been traveling around the western rim of the crater with formations of Mars for nearly two years now, conducting core surveys through rocks or imaging the Martian surface.
The main purpose of Persistence is to collect, store and return scientifically interesting samples of Martian rock to Earth in 2033. Currently, the exploration team is working on the final selection of which samples to bring to the Earth. Whether life once existed on Mars remains a great mystery. Therefore, persistence is a liquid that once flowed into the crater. These Martian rock samples are important to address questions and also to better understand the geological structure of the planet and how it has changed over time.
The sanction crater is believed to be a lake that originated in a delta billions of years ago. Once there was life on Mars, it is thought likely that it lived in areas such as the Sanctions Delta. There are foundations such as the fact that stromatolites, which are considered to be the oldest living things on Earth, lived 3.45 billion years ago.
Persistence collects rocks and broken rocks from the western rim of Jejero Crater, puts them in sample tubes, and stores them in a flat, unobstructed area. So far, persistence has traveled more than 12.9 km to Mars to take 14 rock and atmospheric samples, to ensure easy and reliable access by planetary probes when retrieving samples.
In order to use the samples taken from the European Space Agency’s ESA publication effectively, NASA and ESA plan to review places or samples to invest in the Earth in December. When the first sample tube is delivered to earth, it will be a historic moment in space exploration.
In the Mars Sample Return mission, a rover lands on Mars and the Perseverance team collects rock samples. Then, the sample is placed in the European Earth Return Orbiter waiting in the sky above Mars, and it is finally sent to Earth. The European Earth Return Orbiter is said to be the largest spacecraft ever to orbit Mars. Relevant information can be found here.
