Perseverance, the NASA rover that He’s been hanging around on Mars for almost a couple of years, dropped something a few centimeters from the wheels: “Not to brag – he says from his Twitter account – but this is a very important thing. Dropping this tube on the ground, I have officially started stashing the samples that one day Mars Sample Return may bring back to Earth”.
It is one of the “really important” moments according to NASA, because it begins one of those technological challenges that have, if not science fiction, certainly spectacular. To arrive, in about ten yearsto analyze on Earth the soil samples collected tens or hundreds of millions of kilometers away, on the surface of another world, the journey also begins from that tube, just over a span long, abandoned among the rust-colored pebbles.
Mars Sample Return is the adventure that has just begun, just as another extraordinary feat has reached its epilogue on Mars, with the last postcard sent by the Insight landerlanded four years ago to listen to Martian earthquakes.
That tube left by Perseverance is actually part of the reserve, a backup in case, in a few years, she is unable to deliver the package herself to the courier who will go there to pick it up. In those cylinders (more than one on Twitter pointed out the resemblance to the hilt of lightsabers of Star Wars) has collected samples of soil, dust, sand, rocks, even one of the Martian atmosphere, taken here and there in the points that scientists have deemed most interesting. He has already filled 18 of them and they are all in his belly except one. The way they will be shipped is the most exciting part of this enterprisewhich will be attempted in a few years by NASA and ESA, the European Space Agency.
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Earth-Mars, round trip
The plan consists in sending to the Red Planet a robot carrying a small rocket: the Sample Retrieval Lander, to be launched in 2028, will land a short distance from Perseverance and it will be the latter to deliver the cylinders with the samples. However, the engineers know that Mars is a difficult place: Perseverance, after several years spent working in those prohibitive conditions, may not be able to perform this task. This is the purpose of the reserve of samples (there will be 10 in all) that you will continue to leave at the deposit point, called Three Forks. The lander will take with it a couple of drones, small helicopters like Ingenuity (video), the first vehicle to take flight on another planet. Their task will be to go and recover the pipes dropped by Perseverance at the point where he deposited the first one and where he will also bring the others.
Delivery will take place directly in the rocket compartment, which then it will start the engines and shoot towards Space. Among the many firsts that this program will record in the history books, this is certainly the most fascinating: the Mars Ascend Vehicle will make the first take-off from the Mars surface to arrive in orbit. But this is only the first step back to Earth. Waiting for him beyond the atmosphere will be there another protagonist of this story: it is the Earth Return Orbiter, a gigantic satellite, 7 meters high and with a solar panel wingspan of almost 40 meters. It is the European-led part of the mission, because it will be built by ESA. A rendez vous maneuver precise to the millimeter will be needed because it will have to meet the newly launched rocket in orbit and welcome it into its belly. At that point it will move away from Mars to return to Earth. The long journey will probably last many months (or even a few years) before releasing the precious cargo at the gates of our planet for entry into the atmosphere and recovery. Expected Delivery Date: Early to mid 1930’s. Understood as 2030.
Three missions, one of which is already active e one more complex than the other, will be used to obtain something very valuable for the study of Mars. And to find out if there are traces of life, much more likely past, or even present, in the places that Perseverance is exploring. The Jezero crater was chosen precisely for its characteristics: a river flowed inside it and left the imprint of a large delta, presumably in a Martian lake. So it was rich in water and, for life as we know it, this is an indispensable factor.
We already have samples of Martian rock on Earth, it’s le several dozen meteorites (Nasa counts at least 175) that come right from there, pieces of Mars that have detached following very violent collisions with asteroids or comets, with such violence as to project them into Space and make them wander until they collide with the Earth. One of them made headlines a quarter of a century ago, because some analyses they speculated that it carried with it fossilized remains of primitive life.
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The factor that makes this expedition unique compared to all the others, however, will be the fact of have available samples whose exact provenance is known, because Perseverance has photographed and documented everything, and moreover from a very promising site like that of the Jezero crater. Furthermore, although the rovers are equipped with very advanced instruments for chemical analyses, they are not comparable with terrestrial laboratories and microscopes: recognizing traces of fossil life, from billions of years ago, is not like pinching a little green man wandering among the rocks.
The chemical analyzes will be able to give us clues, perhaps solid ones, if we are lucky they will be evidence for which we will find no other explanation other than that somewhere else, outside the Earth, one lived. And maybe there was a second genesis. But as Carl Sagan said, “extraordinary discoveries require extraordinary evidence” and perhaps Mars Sample Return will bring us some.