He rover NASA’s Perseverance continues to tour Mars to collect Martian samples, search for signs of life and collect data from the geological past; Furthermore, in September, It began its journey to the western edge of Jezero Crater to gain new knowledge about the ancient history of this planet.
On his journey, the rover is facing slopes of up to 23 degrees to reach Jezero Crater in early December and, during the climb, Perseverance has captured a panoramic view of the interior of the crater and images of the tracks it is leaving after some wheels skid on the road.
As you can see in the photo below, the mosaic of images, made up of 44 photographsfeatures many Martian landmarks and firsts that have made the exploration of Jezero “so memorable”—including the landing site of the roverthe location of the first sample depot and the aerodrome for the Ingenuity helicopter—. Furthermore, on the right side of the mosaic you can see a slope of about 20 degrees, taking into account that this It is the first time he has traveled such a steep slope on such a slippery surface.
Rick Welch, the deputy director of the Perseverance project at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, notes in the official blog from the US space agency that “the image shows the biggest challenge to getting to where we want to be in the future. If you look at the right side of the mosaic, you begin to have an idea of what we are facing“.
NASA expands capacity to collect samples
He rover landed on Mars with 43 tubes to collect samples from the Martian surface. So far, Perseverance has sealed and cached 24 rock and regolith samples, plus one atmospheric sample and three core tubes.
Early in mission development, NASA established that the rover was capable of caching at least 31 samples of rock, regolith, and core tubes over the course of the mission. However, the project added twelve more tubes in anticipation of the complicated conditions found on Mars.
How much does it cost to bring samples from Mars to Earth?
NASA hopes to bring the first Mars samples to Earth during the 2030sbut budget constraints mean the US space agency is looking for a cheaper method to bring the samples collected by the rover Perseverance.
In a conference call in mid-April, Administrator Bill Nelson announced that the current plan to bring in the first samples could cost up to $11 billion and would likely could not be achieved until 2040 by the fiscal year 2025 budget.
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