

Mission scientists believe the igneous and sedimentary rock 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 depot samples will serve as a backup set while the other half remain inside Perseverance, which would be the primary means to convey samples to a Sample Retrieval Lander as part of the campaign.


One sample from each pair taken so far now sits in the carefully arranged depot in the “Three Forks” region of Jezero Crater.

Throughout its science campaigns, the rover has been taking a pair of samples from rocks the mission team deems scientifically significant. This major milestone involved precision planning and navigation to ensure the tubes could be safely recovered in the future by the NASA-ESA (European Space Agency) Mars Sample Return campaign, which aims to bring Mars samples to Earth for closer study. 29, by mission controllers at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. Confirmation that NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover successfully dropped the 10th and final tube planned for the depot was received around 5 p.m. Less than six weeks after it began, construction of the first sample depot on another world is complete.
