NASA’s Perseverance rover has begun depositing small titanium tubes containing rock and soil samples on the Red Planet, marking the first time humans have set up a small “sample repository” on another planet to be collected by another mission.

On December 21, the first titanium sample tube was left in a flatter area of ​​the Jezero crater called Three Forks. Over the next two months, ten test tubes of various types will be left at this location.

The sample was collected on January 31, 2022 by the rover’s sophisticated “Sampling and Caching System” in an area called “South Seitach”, also in the Lake Crater. It took an hour for the metal tube to be removed from Perseverance’s belly, carefully examined with a video camera, and placed in a specific location on the Martian soil. Another video camera was then used to check where the pipe reached the ground so that it could be captured years later when a mission to collect samples arrived.

Over the past 16 months, Perseverance has drilled into the Martian surface several times and collected several types of Martian rock and dust into dozens of tiny, perfectly sealed titanium tubes that it left in the Martian soil.

These tubes are to be picked up in a few years by another mission, which in a series of complicated steps will bring them to Earth, where they will be analyzed in the best laboratories. This mission consists of several stages, and the stones will reach Earth after 2030.

A few billion years ago, there was a lake and possibly a delta in the Jezero crater. Scientists hope the site will provide evidence that simple life forms may have existed on early Mars.