NASA’s Martian rover has finished hoarding samples that might contain proof of ancient life
. Scientists believe that, billions of years ago, Jezero Crater may have contained a river that flowed into a vast lake, which could have provided the necessary environment to support microbial life.
The rover is currently carrying 17 primary samples, which the space agency hopes can eventually be delivered to a sample return lander and delivered back to Earth. The freshly completed sample depot — located in the Three Forks region of the Jezero Crater — will serve as a backup cache in case Perseverance is unable to deliver its onboard samples.
This map shows where the Perseverance rover dropped each of its 10 samples in the Three Forks region of the Jezero Crater.
NASA currently estimates that the sample retrieval lander will land by 2028 at the earliest and that the collected samples won’t arrive on Earth until at least 2033. That is, obviously, far easier said than done. The Mars sample return mission represents over a decade of work and requires numerous incredibly complex steps to succeed, some of which have never previously been attempted — such as landing a rocket on Mars that’s capable of taking off again. If the teams behind the mission can successfully pull off these herculean efforts, however, we will be closer than we’ve ever been to knowing if life has existed beyond our Earth.
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