“We get to Mars largely like the Curiosity rover got to Mars, but we need to do something very different once we’re on Mars. “Those samples tubes are part of a Sample and Caching System, which is one of our biggest engineering developments for this mission,” Steltzner said. The tubes are about the size and shape of a slim cigar, and the Perseverance rover will collect core samples on Mars that measure around a half-inch (13 millimeters) wide and 2.4 inches (60 millimeters) long. The other four tubes were previously loaded into other locations within the rover’s Sample and Caching System. The Perseverance rover will carry 43 sample tubes to Mars, including “witness tubes” or blanks, which will allow scientists to cross-check rock and sediment specimens returned to Earth for contamination. The tubes will ride to Mars inside the housing, and they will be returned to the sheath once filled with Martian rock samples. “It’s inside its aeroshell, and just prior to putting the heat shield on and enclosing the vehicle forever, until Mars, we bring these sample tubes and place them into the body of the rover, and put in a protective cover that we will eject once we get to Mars,” Stetlzner said.Įach tube is sheathed in a gold-colored cylindrical enclosure, providing an extra layer of contamination protection. The aeroshell will protect the spacecraft during descent through the Martian atmosphere. Similar in appearance and design to NASA’s Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars in 2012, the Perseverance rover was already attached to its aeroshell when technicians installed the 39 sample tubes May 21. “Part of the effort to do that involves us hyper-cleaning the sample tubes in which the samples that we take on Mars will be placed, and then placing them into the rover at last possible minute,” Steltzner said June 10 in a presentation to the National Academies’ Space Studies Board. “We need to make the sample tubes that we take to Mars cleaner than anything that we’ve ever done before in space, and cleaner than almost everything we do here on Earth,” said Adam Steltzner, chief engineer for the NASA’s Mars 2020 mission - of which the Perseverance rover is a part - at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. In early July, once the rover is mounted on top of its Atlas 5 rocket, ground crews plan to affix a nuclear battery to the spacecraft that will generate power for years of driving across the surface of Mars. The addition of 39 super-clean sample tubes, each sterilized in an oven, into the underside of the robotic spacecraft marked one of the final major items to be installed on the Perseverance rover before launch next month. The Perseverance rover’s sterilized sample tubes - designed to seal Martian rock and sediment for eventual return to Earth - are installed on the spacecraft as teams at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center prepare to enclose the rover inside the payload shroud of its Atlas 5 launcher for liftoff July 20. Technicians installed sample collection tubes into NASA’s Perseverance rover May 21 before launch to Mars in July.
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