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NASA's Perseverance rover is on a mission to collect rock samples and study the surface of Mars.
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The rover has collected samples of Martian regolith and atmosphere in its sample cache, as well as 10 backup sample tubes that it left on the Martian surface.
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The rover has snapped 368 images of its path from the 10 backup samples and stitched them into a single sweeping shot of the Martian surface.
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The image was taken on January 31, 2023, and shows the location of each sample tube.
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The depot is distributed across Three Forks, where an ancient river forked into a delta that fed into Jezero Crater.
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The Perseverance mission is looking for astrobiological clues and hoping to find ancient microbial biomarkers, which would show that Mars once held life.
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The Mars Sample Return mission is now slated for no earlier than 2033, meaning we'll have to wait at least a decade for more spacecraft to retrieve the samples and bring them back to Earth.
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The Perseverance mission is providing key insights into the planetary science of Mars, including changes over time and the composition of its regolith.
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The mission has lasted two years so far, during which time the rover has explored Jezero's western rim and is now climbing up out of the crater basin.
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The images captured by Perseverance provide remarkable imagery of the Red Planet for us to appreciate until the samples are returned to Earth.