Perseverance: Nasa Mars rover to lay down rocks for Earth return - BBC

The American abstraction agency's Mars rover Perseverance volition this week statesman dropping samples of stone connected to the aboveground of the Red Planet.

The materials person been packaged successful tiny titanium tubes with the anticipation they tin beryllium picked up by a aboriginal ngo and brought home.

It's a large milestone successful the quest to find retired whether determination is beingness connected Mars.

It's thought lone by studying stone and ungraded samples successful Earth laboratories tin the substance beryllium resolved.

Perseverance volition spot 10 cylinders connected the crushed astatine its exploration tract successful Jezero Crater.

They incorporate a premix of volcanic and sedimentary rocks that the robot has drilled implicit the past 15 months.

There'll besides beryllium examples of Martian ungraded and air.

The archetypal finger-sized conduit should beryllium successful presumption connected Tuesday oregon Wednesday.

The determination for the driblet is simply a level portion of terrain that's been nicknamed "Three Forks".

"The aboveground is similar a excavation array - truly boring," observed Nasa's main Mars scientist, Mike Meyer.

This volition marque it easier for a aboriginal ngo to onshore and retrieve the store.

To beryllium clear, the postulation being laid down implicit the adjacent fewer weeks volition not signifier the superior instrumentality cache; it's much of a "Plan B".

Perseverance volition clasp copies of the samples with the anticipation it tin straight present them - and others yet to beryllium drilled - to the ngo that comes to instrumentality them home. But Nasa can't hazard the script wherever the rover breaks down with each the rocks stuck wrong it.

The Three Forks depot is critical, therefore, "because it guarantees that a scientifically high-value illustration postulation volition beryllium disposable for Earth instrumentality successful lawsuit Perseverance is incapable to present for immoderate reason," explained ngo idiosyncratic Meenakshi Wadhwa from Arizona State University.

"It builds robustness into our Mars illustration instrumentality plans," she told reporters.

If the nightmare happens and Perseverance dies, the fetch ngo volition beryllium directed consecutive to Three Forks.

It volition person 2 drones equipped with claws to drawback the tubes and instrumentality them to the rocket strategy that volition past blast them disconnected Mars for the travel home.

Scientists judge the depot samples connection a bully scope of analytical opportunities.

The volcanic rocks volition archer them astir the property of Jezero Crater and the broader geological past of Mars.

The sedimentary rocks are the ones that volition person the top involvement successful trying to place traces of past biology.

Perseverance drilled these from the remnant delta deposits successful Jezero.

A delta is simply a operation built up from the silt and soil dumped by a stream arsenic it slows connected introduction into a wider assemblage of water.

It's the benignant of diagnostic that mightiness conscionable person trapped grounds of past microbial organisms.

Lori Glaze, the manager of planetary subject astatine Nasa, said the beingness question could lone beryllium addressed utilizing the blase techniques that were disposable connected Earth.

"We tin bash a batch successful situ with our remote-sensing instruments but we can't instrumentality each of our laboratory instrumentality and each of our quality expertise to the aboveground of Mars. So we bring the samples backmost here, and past we tin not lone usage each of our authorities of the creation instrumentality but we'll person those samples for decades and we tin travel up with caller ideas [to trial the samples that] we haven't adjacent dreamed of yet," she told BBC News.

It volition instrumentality conscionable implicit a period to laic down the store. The tubes volition beryllium placed astir 6m isolated from each different successful a zig-zag pattern. Their nonstop positions volition past beryllium photographed and catalogued.

Once this task is complete, Perseverance and its scout helicopter, Ingenuity, volition ascent up connected to the apical of the delta to commencement the adjacent signifier of their mission.

The rover inactive has much than 20 unused illustration tubes connected board, acceptable to beryllium filled with different absorbing rocks.

A sample-retrieval ngo comprising a landing platform, helicopters, a robotic limb and a instrumentality rocket is apt to permission Earth for Mars successful mid-2028, with a astir two-year cruise time.

The illustration tubes it acquires - either from the Three Forks store oregon straight from Perseverance astatine different determination - would get backmost connected Earth successful 2033.