On Thursday, March 30, NASA’s Perseverance rover collected and stored the first sample of the mission’s latest science campaign. The team discovers and learns a new area with each campaign. The rover then explores the top of the Jezero crater delta. Perseverance collected a total of 19 samples and three witness tubes, and recently placed 10 tubes on the Martian surface as a backup cache as part of the NASA-ESA (European Space Agency) Mars sample return campaign.

Scientists want to study Martian samples using powerful laboratory equipment on Earth to find signs of ancient microbial life and to better understand the water cycle that shaped Mars’ surface and interior.

This final rock sample, which the science team calls “Berea,” is the 16th rock sample taken from the mission’s core (there are also regolith—or rock debris and dust—and samples of the Martian atmosphere; click here for more on the samples). The scientific team believes that Beria was formed from rock deposits carried downstream by an ancient river. This means that the material may have come from an area far beyond Crater Lake, which is one of the reasons the team saw the rock so promising.

“The second reason is that the rock is rich in carbonates,” said Kathy Stack Morgan, assistant scientist for the Perseverance project at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “Carbonate rocks on Earth may well preserve fossilized life forms. If there are biosignatures in this part of Jezero Crater, there may well be such a rock that could well keep its secrets.”

This animation shows NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover collecting rock samples from a ledge the science team calls “Berea” using a drill bit at the end of a robotic arm. Images were captured by one of the rover’s front camerasCredit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Climate puzzle

A big mystery is how the Martian climate works when the region is covered with liquid water. Because carbonates are formed as a result of chemical interactions in liquid water, they can provide scientists with a long-term record of changes in the planet’s climate. The research team can help fill in the gaps by examining the carbonate in the Berea sample.

“The Berea core highlights the beauty of rover missions,” said Perseverance Project Scientist Ken Farley of the Cal Institute of Technology in Pasadena. “Perseverance’s mobility allowed us to collect igneous samples from the relatively flat crater floor during the initial campaign and then travel to the bottom of the crater delta, where we found fine-grained sedimentary rocks deposited on the dry lake bed. We are currently sampling from a geological site where we find coarse-grained sedimentary rocks deposited in the river. We’re confident the samples will allow us to better understand what happened in Jezero Crater billions of years ago.”

Once this final sample is safely stored in a sample tube in the rover’s abdomen, the six-wheeled vehicle will continue up the Lake’s sediment range until the next bend in the dry riverbed, which the science team calls “Castell Henllys.”