Nasa assures Mars dust would not bury Perseverance rover’s latest rock sample tubes

‘For the sample tubes, it shouldn’t be a big problem,’ Nasa said

Dust or wind on Mars would not affect the new caches of Martian rock samples deposited on the Red Planet’s surface by Nasa’s rover, the space agency has said.

Since last week, the Perseverance rover has been depositing light-saber-shaped titanium tubes containing martian rock samples at a site on Mars called “Three Forks” – marking humanity’s first sample depot on another planet.

The American space agency hopes that in a future sample return mission to Earth, the rover would deliver these collected samples to a robotic lander which would then place the tubes in a capsule inside a small rocket to be sent off to Mars orbit.

Another spacecraft orbiting Mars is then expected to capture the sample container and return safely to Earth.

“Martian wind can certainly lift fine dust and leave it on surfaces. But for the sample tubes, it shouldn’t be a big problem,” Perseverance Rover’s official Twitter account noted on Saturday.

Although Mars can get windy, since its atmosphere is less dense – about 1/100th that of Earth’s – Nasa noted that winds on the Red Planet are not strong enough to “pick up a lot of stuff”.

“These samples are a backup, set aside in case I’m not able to deliver my main set of samples directly to the next lander,” Nasa said.

Since the sample return mission is expected to take another nine years, Nasa shared a picture of what the space agency’s Curiosity rover - launched in 2011 – looked like after nine years on Mars.

While dusty, the Curiosity rover was still “hardly unrecognizable,” the agency noted.

The Perseverance rover is also “carefully documenting” where the caches of Martian rock samples have been deposited, Nasa said, adding that “going back to them again later shouldn’t be an issue.”

One of the main objectives of the mission is to search for signs of ancient microbial life on Mars, and also to characterise the Red Planet’s geology and past climate.

Once returned to Earth, the collected Martian rock samples would help scientists conduct more in-depth assessments which were not possible with the limited number of instruments the Perseverance mission could carry.