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Yay! What does the tube do?
It safeguards the sample for return to Earth. Of course the tube will need to be sealed and delivered to the sample depot first, but at least we’ve finally managed to secure one, after the previous failed try.
I didn’t realize there were returning to earth plans! Have they figured out how that’ll happen yet?
Have they figured out how that’ll happen yet?
Short answer: If “they” refers to NASA (and ESA) - no.
Long answer:
China has plans to launch their Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission, Tianwen-3, in 2028, though they won’t be grabbing these samples from Perseverance, obviously (even the nearest proposed landing site is ~2000 km away). The samples would be returned in 2031.Now I will gladly accept any samples from a known site on the Martian surface - even contaminated ones. However, we should all remember that the 30 core samples gathered by Perseverance (so far) have been chosen with great care, across 45+ km of roving and years of careful analysis, right there on the Martian ground. Their science value is already known to be off the charts, representing a variety of different environments and time periods in Martian history, and that includes the era where this region hosted the Neretva River watershed and Lake Jezero. This comprehensive slice of Martian history is not something that Tianwen-3 or any single-phase MSR mission will be able to match, I am certain, no matter how skilled (or lucky) the landing site selection may be.
Certain prominent figures in the United States (hint: they’re not popular on Lemmy, or in the planetary science community) have hindered plans for a Western-led MSR. They seem to think that we can bypass the robotic sample return phase altogether, and simply launch a human crew to the surface. For reasons I won’t get into here, I think it is highly unlikely that a first human landing on Mars would be able to return the sheer variety of high-value samples that Perseverance has gathered - certainly not with the landing sites that have been proposed so far.
I hope this was clear, happy to answer any related questions.
No, and last I heard the budget for the sample return mission had been cut.
The NASA/ESA mission was cut, yes. China’s Tianwen-3 is reportedly still on track, and Japan launched theirs this week, although that one is going to Phobos (Mars’ first moon) instead. Nonetheless, if either mission succeeds, even partially, they leapfrog any Western-led Mars sample return by several years, at least.
Timelapse video of the abrasion and coring operation
