NASAs Mars Sample Tubes Air Piques Scientists Interest
5 min read
NASA's Perseverance rover viewed these dust devils swirling across the surface of Mars on July 20, 2021. Scientists want to study the air trapped in samples being collected in metal tubes by Perseverance. Those air samples could help them better understand the Martian atmosphere.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
Tucked away with each rock and soil sample collected by the agency's Perseverance rover is a potential boon for atmospheric scientists.
Atmospheric scientists get a little more excited with every rock core NASA's Perseverance Mars rover seals in its titanium sample tubes, which are being gathered for eventual delivery to Earth as part of the Mars Sample Return campaign. Twenty-four have been taken so far.
Most of those samples consist of rock cores or regolith (broken rock and dust) that might reveal important information about the history of the planet and whether microbial life was present billions of years ago. But some scientists are just as thrilled at the prospect of studying the "headspace," or air in the extra room around the rocky material, in the tubes.
This image shows a rock core about the size of a piece of chalk in a sample tube housed within the drill of NASA's Perseverance Mars rover. Once the rover seals the tube, air will be trapped in the extra space in the tube - seen here in the small gap (called "headspace") above the rock.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS
A sealed tube containing a sample of the Martian surface collected by NASA's Perseverance Mars rover is seen here, after being deposited with other tubes in a "sample depot." Other filled sample tubes are stored within the rover.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
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