Perseverance starts its extended mission on Saturday (Jan. 7).
That campaign will launch a rocket-toting NASA lander as well as an ESA Earth-return orbiter to the Red Planet in the mid to late 2020s. The plan calls for Perseverance to drive its samples over to the lander; the rocket will then launch the precious cargo to Mars orbit, where the ESA probe will snag it and haul the material back to Earth.
Perseverance has made a lot of progress on the sampling front to date. The rover has already filled up and sealedas well as three of its five"witness tubes," which will help mission team members assess the cleanliness of Perseverance's sampling system. on a patch of Jezero's floor that the mission team calls Three Forks. This depot is a backup, to cover for the possibility that Perseverance won't be able to ferry its samples to the lander when the time comes.
In that case, two small helicopters that will launch aboard the lander will fetch the sample tubes from the depot one by one. With this hedge in mind, the mission team has been collecting two samples from each of its target rocks. Perseverance is keeping one set on board and caching the other set.
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