Rapid Fire
NASA's Mars Sample Return Program
- 20 Apr 2024
- 1 min read
Recently, NASA’s Perseverance Rover, nicknamed Percy, created the first “sample depot on another world” by putting down ten rock sample tubes that were supposed to be returned to Earth as part of the Mars Sample Return Campaign.
- However, the plan is too expensive costing $11 billion, and will only be executed by the year 2040.
- Perseverance rover:
- It is a robotic explorer part of NASA's Mars 2020 mission.
- Launched in July 2020, it landed on Mars' Jezero Crater in February 2021.
- It is a Mars rover about the size of a car but weighs only about 1,025 kilograms with all instruments on board.
- It collects rock and soil samples, encasing them in tubes for a future return to Earth.
- A Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator, which uses heat from plutonium decay to generate electricity, acts as the power source for the rover.
Read more: Perseverance Rover, Mars
