The Future of Perseverance’s First Core

This week marked an important milestone on Mars- Perseverance successfully drilled into the planet’s surface and collected the mission’s first core sample, Montdenier, from a rock named Rochette! This is an exciting accomplishment, but the sample’s journey has just begun. Hundreds of millions of miles away, the Montdenier core is stored safely inside a sealed tube onboard the rover, waiting to catch a ride to Earth. Mars 2020 is the first in a series of missions working together to return samples from Mars to Earth, for the first time in human history! As the first leg of Mars Sample Return (MSR), Perseverance is tasked with roving Jezero crater, collecting core samples, and documenting the geologic context for these samples. Perseverance may then deposit these samples as a “cache” at one or more depot sites on the surface of Mars. Future MSR mission will return to the depot site(s) in Jezero, where Montdenier may very well be one of the tubes selected for return to Earth so scientists can study them hands-on!