Ten sample tubes, capturing an amazing variety of Martian geology, have been deposited on Mars’ surface so they could be studied on Earth in the future. Less than six weeks after it began, construction of the first sample depot on another world is complete. Confirmation that NASA’s Perseverance M
cores provide an excellent cross-section of the geologic processes that took place in Jezero shortly after the crater’s formation almost 4 billion years ago. The rover also deposited an atmospheric sample and what’s called a, which is used to determine if samples being collected might be contaminated with materials that traveled with the rover from Earth.
The titanium tubes were deposited on the surface in an intricate zigzag pattern, with each sample about 15 to 50 feet apart from one another to ensure they could be safely recovered. Adding time to the depot-creation process, the team needed to precisely map the location of each 7-inch-long tube and glove combination so that the samples could be found even if covered with dust.
“With the Three Forks depot in our rearview mirror, Perseverance is now headed up the delta,” said Rick Welch, Perseverance’s deputy project manager at. “We’ll make our ascent via the ‘Hawksbill Gap’ route we previously explored. Once we pass the geologic unit the science team calls ‘Rocky Top,’ we will be in new territory and begin exploring the Delta Top.”NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover dropped the last of 10 tubes at the “Three Forks” sample depot on Jan.
“We found that from the base of the delta up to the level where Rocky Top is located, the rocks appear to have been deposited in a lake environment,” said Ken Farley, Perseverance project scientist at Caltech. “And those just above Rocky Top appear to have been created in or at the end of a Martian river flowing into the lake. As we ascend the delta into a river setting, we expect to move into rocks that are composed of larger grains – from sand to large boulders.
One of the first stops the rover will make during the new science campaign is at a location the science team calls the “Curvilinear Unit.” Essentially a Martian sandbar, the unit is made of sediment that eons ago was deposited in a bend in one of Jezero’s inflowing river channels.
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