Task complete! Perseverance Mars rover snaps photo of filled sample depot

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Perseverance has recorded the 10-sample Three Forks cache for posterity.

NASA's Perseverance rover captured this portrait of its recently completed 10-sample depot using its Mastcam-Z camera on Jan. 31, 2023, the 693rd Martian day, or sol, of the mission.
NASA's Perseverance rover captured this portrait of its recently completed 10-sample depot using its Mastcam-Z camera on Jan. 31, 2023, the 693rd Martian day, or sol, of the mission. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS)

NASA's Perseverance Mars rover has recorded the first-ever off-Earth sample depot for posterity.

Perseverance built that depot on a patch of Martian ground called Three Forks over the course of five weeks beginning on Dec. 21, 2022. The cache contains 10 sealed titanium sample tubes, which a joint NASA-European Space Agency (ESA) campaign may end up bringing home to Earth a decade from now.

On Jan. 31, the car-sized rover took a series of photos to commemorate its recent work. Mission team members have now stitched together 368 of those images into a panorama, which shows the location of all 10 cached tubes.

Related: Mars sample return mission adds 2 helicopters, scraps 'fetch' rover

An annotated version of the portrait captured by NASA's Perseverance rover on Jan. 31, 2023 shows the location of the 10 sample tubes in the depot. The "Amalik" sample closest to the rover was about 10 feet (3 meters) away; the "Mageik" and "Malay" samples farthest away were approximately 197 feet (60 m) from the rover.

An annotated version of the portrait captured by NASA's Perseverance rover on Jan. 31, 2023 shows the location of the 10 sample tubes in the Three Forks depot. The "Amalik" sample closest to the rover was about 10 feet (3 meters) away; the "Mageik" and "Malay" samples farthest away were approximately 197 feet (60 m) from the rover.  (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS)

Perseverance and its tiny ride-along cousin, the Ingenuity helicopter, landed on the floor of Mars' 28-mile-wide (45 kilometers) Jezero Crater in February 2021. 

The rover has two main tasks: Hunt for signs of past Mars life inside Jezero, which hosted a big lake and a river delta billions of years ago, and collect samples for future return to Earth. (Ingenuity has shifted from a technology-demonstrating mission to an extended phase during which it's serving as a scout for Perseverance.)

The baseline sample-return architecture calls for Perseverance to deliver its sealed tubes to a rocket-equipped NASA lander, which will then launch them to Mars orbit. An ESA-built Earth Return Orbiter will snag them up there and haul the samples back to Earth, perhaps as early as 2033.

The orbiter and lander are scheduled to launch in 2027 and 2028, respectively. Perseverance is in good condition today, but there's no guarantee it will be healthy enough to do this ferry work five or six years from now — and that's where the Three Forks depot comes in. If Perseverance is out of the picture, two Ingenuity-like helicopters that will launch with the sample-retrieval lander will fetch the depot tubes one by one. 

This photomontage shows each of the sample tubes deposited by NASA's Perseverance Mars rover at the Three Forks sample depot, as viewed by the WATSON camera on the end of the rover's robotic arm.

This photomontage shows each of the sample tubes deposited by NASA's Perseverance Mars rover at the Three Forks sample depot, as viewed by the WATSON camera on the end of the rover's robotic arm.  (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)
Related stories:

— Perseverance rover collects Mars samples rich in 'organic matter' for future return to Earth

— Perseverance Mars rover stashes final sample, completing Red Planet depot

— 12 amazing photos from the Perseverance rover's 1st year on Mars

Perseverance brought 43 titanium tubes to Mars. Thirty-eight of these are designed to be filled with drilled rock cores or scooped dirt samples, while the other five are "witness tubes" that will help mission team members sniff out possible contaminants from Earth in the Martian material. 

The rover has sealed three of its five witness tubes and 18 of its 38 sample tubes to date. Of those sample tubes, 15 are filled with drilled rock cores, two contain loose dirt and one is an "atmospheric sample" — the result of Perseverance's failed first-ever sample-collecting attempt, which went awry because its target rock was too crumbly to produce a good rock core.

Mike Wall is the author of "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall.  Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. 

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Mike Wall
Mike Wall
Senior Space Writer

Michael Wall is a Senior Space Writer with Space.com and joined the team in 2010. He primarily covers exoplanets, spaceflight and military space, but has been known to dabble in the space art beat. His book about the search for alien life, "Out There," was published on Nov. 13, 2018. Before becoming a science writer, Michael worked as a herpetologist and wildlife biologist. He has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the University of Sydney, Australia, a bachelor's degree from the University of Arizona, and a graduate certificate in science writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz. To find out what his latest project is, you can follow Michael on Twitter.