NASA’s Mars rover Perseverance is storing rock and soil samples in sealed tubes on the planet’s surface for retrieval by future missions, as shown in this illustration. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
It is stored alongside the rock and soil samples collected. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)The rover, Perseverance, could be a huge boon to atmospheric scientists.
NASA Perseverance Mars The rover is collecting samples on Mars, including rock cores and atmospheric gases, which it will eventually bring back to Earth. These samples could provide important insights into the Martian atmosphere and its evolution, and shed light on the possibility of microbial life having existed billions of years ago. The gas samples in particular could provide valuable data on trace gases and the ancient climate of Mars, show similarities with the history of Earth’s atmosphere, and aid future human exploration of Mars.
Mars sample collection
Atmospheric scientists are growing more excited with each rock core that NASA’s Mars rover Perseverance seals in a titanium sample tube. The samples are being collected for eventual delivery to Earth as part of the Mars Sample Return Campaign. twenty four This is what has been filmed so far.
Most of the samples consist of rock cores and regolith (broken rock and dust), which could reveal important information about Earth’s history and whether microbial life existed billions of years ago. But some scientists are just as excited about the prospect of studying the “headspace” in the tubes – the air in the extra space around the rock material.
They want to learn more about the Martian atmosphere, which is made up mostly of carbon dioxide but may also contain traces of other gases that may have been present since the planet’s formation.
![Perseverance Mars Rover Sample Headspace](https://scitechdaily.com/images/Perseverance-Mars-Rover-Sample-Headspace-777x578.jpg)
This image shows a chalk-sized rock core in a sample tube housed inside a drill on NASA’s Mars rover Perseverance. When the rover seals the tube, air gets trapped in the extra space inside the tube. Here, air is trapped in a small gap above the rock (called the “headspace”). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS
Insights from Martian Headspace
“Air samples from Mars will tell us not only about the current climate and atmosphere, but how it has changed over time,” said planetary scientist Brandy Carrier at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California. “They will also help us understand how climates different from Earth’s have evolved.”
Among the samples that will be brought back to Earth, there is one tube filled only with gas that was deposited on the Martian surface as part of the sample repository. However, the majority of the gas the rover collected is within the headspace of the rock samples. These samples are unique because the gas will interact with the rock material in the tube for years before the samples are opened and analyzed in laboratories on Earth. What scientists get from them will give them insight into how much water vapor is floating near the Martian surface, which is one of the factors that determines where Martian ice forms on the planet, and insight into how the Martian water cycle has evolved over time.
![Perseverance Mars Rover Sealed Sample Tube](https://scitechdaily.com/images/Perseverance-Mars-Rover-Sealed-Sample-Tube-777x577.jpg)
A sealed tube containing a Martian surface sample collected by NASA’s Mars rover Perseverance is shown here after being stored in a “sample vault” with other tubes. Other filled sample tubes are stored inside the rover. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Comparison of trace gases and ancient atmospheres
Scientists also hope to better understand trace gases in the Martian atmosphere. Of most scientific interest would be the detection of noble gases (such as neon, argon, and xenon). These gases are extremely unreactive and could have been present in the atmosphere unchanged since it formed billions of years ago. Capturing these gases could reveal whether Mars had an atmosphere at all. (Ancient Martian atmosphere was much thicker than it is today, but scientists are not sure if it always was or formed later.) Another big question remains about how the ancient Martian atmosphere compared to that of early Earth.
Additionally, the headspace provides an opportunity to assess the size and toxicity of dust particles, information that could be useful to future Mars astronauts.
“Gas samples have a lot to offer Mars scientists,” said Justin Simon, a geochemist at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, who is part of a group of more than a dozen international experts that will decide which samples the rover should collect. “Even scientists who don’t study Mars will be interested because they will shed light on how the planet formed and evolves.”
Apollo air samples
In 2021, a group of planetary researchers, including scientists from NASA, studied air brought back from the moon in a steel container. Apollo 17 Astronauts from about 50 years ago.
“Although many people think of the moon as airless, it does have a very tenuous atmosphere that interacts with the rocks on the moon’s surface over time,” said Simon, who studies a variety of planetary samples at Johnson Space Center. “This includes noble gases that leak out of the moon’s interior and collect on the lunar surface.”
Laboratory techniques for gas analysis
The way Simon’s team extracted the gases for their study is similar to what they were able to do with Perseverance’s air samples: First, they placed the unopened container into a sealed container. Then they pierced the steel with a needle and extracted the gases into a cold trap, which is basically a U-shaped pipe that extends into a liquid with a low freezing point, like nitrogen. By changing the temperature of the liquid, the scientists captured some of the low-freezing-point gases at the bottom of the cold trap.
“There are probably about 25 labs around the world that manipulate gases this way,” Simon says, adding that the technique could be applied not only to studying the origins of planetary materials, but also to gases in hot springs and those escaping from the walls of active volcanoes.
Of course, these sources provide much more gas than is stored in Perseverance’s sample tube, but if a single tube can’t carry enough gas to perform a particular experiment, Mars scientists can combine gas from multiple tubes to get a larger aggregate sample, another way that headspace provides bonus opportunities for science.
NASA’s Mars rover Perseverance
NASA’s Mars rover Perseverance is part of the Mars 2020 mission and is an advanced mobile laboratory designed to explore the Martian surface. Launched on July 30, 2020, and landing in Mars’ Jezero Crater on February 18, 2021, Perseverance’s primary mission is to search for signs of ancient life and collect rock and regolith (broken rock and soil) samples to potentially bring back to Earth.