Has NASA discovered life on Mars? NASA’s Perseverance Rover has collected a sample of Martian rock that may contain evidence of life.
However, don’t get too enthusiastic just yet, as this particular tube won’t reach a terrestrial laboratory for approximately ten years.
The car-sized robot drilled into the sediment of Jezero Crater on the Red Planet on Thursday, signaling the first sample of its new mission.
It has been roaming Mars for nearly a year in search of sampling locations that may contain ancient microbes and organics.
The first of four search efforts focused on the crater floor and Neretva Vallis delta.
Now it has begun its second campaign, which consists of searching for suitable rocks at the summit of the delta.
The NASA-ESA “Mars Sample Return campaign” includes these. (ESA).
Ken Farley, the project scientist for Perseverance at Caltech, stated, “Perseverance’s mobility has allowed us to collect igneous samples from the relatively flat crater floor during the first campaign, and then travel to the base of the crater’s delta, where we discovered fine-grained sedimentary rocks deposited in a dried lakebed.
Now we are collecting samples from a geological site where we discover coarse-grained sedimentary rocks deposited in a river.
We are confident that these samples will help us better comprehend what took place at Jezero Crater billions of years ago, given the variety of environments from which we can observe and collect.
The sixteenth tube holds a drill-cored rock fragment, and the nineteenth is its most recent sample.
Other containers contain ‘regolith,’ which consists of fragments of inorganic rock and dust, and the Martian atmosphere.
These 19 samples will remain in their midsection until a robotic lander arrives on Mars in the future.
Perseverance will deliver these samples to the lander, which will then use a robotic arm to position the tubes in the rocket’s containment capsule.
After the rocket enters Mars’ orbit, the ESA’s Earth Return Orbiter will recover the capsule.
By 2033, the first Mars samples will be brought to Earth.
