NASA’s Perseverance took this selfie of itself looking down at one of 10 sample tubes deposited at the sample depot it created in an area nicknamed “Three Forks.” This image was taken by the WATSON camera on the rover’s robotic arm on Jan. 20, 2023, the 684th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
NASA’s Perseverance rover on Mars has cooly notched up another significant first by creating the first ever storage depot on another world for Martian soil samples. But if the rover’s mission goes to plan and it continues to operate as scheduled, the cached samples could be left on the Martian surface forever.