Sampling Mars: Geologic context and preliminary characterization of samples collected by the NASA Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover Mission

Creators: Herd, Christopher D. K.¹; Bosak, Tanja²; Hausrath, Elisabeth M.³; Hickman-Lewis, Keyron^{4, 5}; Mayhew, Lisa E.⁶; Shuster, David L.⁷; Siljeström, Sandra⁸; Simon, Justin I.⁹; Weiss, Benjamin P.²; Wadhwa, Meenakshi¹⁰; Zorzano, Maria-Paz¹¹; Maki, Justin N.¹²; Farley, Kenneth A.^{12, 13}; Stack, Kathryn M.¹²

1. University of Alberta
2. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
3. University of Nevada Reno
4. Birkbeck, University of London
5. University of Bologna
6. University of Colorado Boulder
7. University of California, Berkeley
8. Research Institutes of Sweden
9. Johnson Space Center
10. Arizona State University
11. Centro de Astrobiología
12. Jet Propulsion Lab
13. California Institute of Technology

Abstract

The NASA Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover Mission has collected samples of rock, regolith, and atmosphere within the Noachian-aged Jezero Crater, once the site of a delta-lake system with a high potential for habitability and biosignature preservation. Between sols 109 and 1,088 of the mission, 27 sample tubes have been sealed, including witness tubes. Each sealed sample tube has been collected along with detailed documentation provided by the Perseverance instrument payload, preserving geological and environmental context. Samples representative of the stratigraphy within each of four campaigns have been collected: samples from the Crater Floor Campaign represent a suite of potentially petrogenetically related igneous rocks displaying variable degrees of aqueous alteration; samples from the Fan Front record fluvial to deltaic sediments formed by the transport and deposition of materials from the Jezero watershed; regolith samples from the Fan Front preserve material possibly representative of global dust as well as diverse, locally derived clasts; Upper Fan samples record the latest stages of aqueous activity within Jezero; and samples from the Margin Campaign preserve lacustrine, littoral, or possibly igneous processes that may have occurred early in the history of the crater. Along with anticipated samples from the older rocks within the rim of Jezero Crater, Perseverance promises to deliver a suite of samples preserving a diversity of formation environments and ages. Upon return to Earth and analysis in terrestrial laboratories, these samples would address longstanding questions pertaining to the geologic evolution of Mars, its habitability, and the potential for life outside the Earth.

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Acknowledgement

Sampling by the Perseverance rover would be impossible without the Mars 2020 Science and Engineering teams. We thank Rachel Kronyak for input on this manuscript. We thank two anonymous reviewers for constructive comments that resulted in improvements to the manuscript. The Mars 2020 mission and NASA Return Sample Science Participating Scientists (T.B., E.M.H., L.E.M., D.L.S., J.I.S., and B.P.W.) are supported by the NASA Mars Exploration Program. C.D.K.H. is supported by Canadian Space Agency Mars 2020 Participating Scientist Grant CSA CGCPU 20EXPMARS. E.M.H. acknowledges funding from NASA RSS PS 80NSSC20K0239. K.H.-L. acknowledges funding from the UK Space Agency (Grant Nos. ST/V00560X/1 and ST/Z000491/1). L.E.M. acknowledges funding from NASA RSS PS 80NSSC20K0240. S.S. acknowledges funding from the Swedish National Space Agency (Contracts 2021-00092 and 137/19). B.P.W. acknowledges funding from NASA RSS PS 80NSSC20K0238. M.-P.Z. was supported by Grant PID2022-140180OB-C21 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/FEDER, UE. Part of this research was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the NASA (80NM0018D0004). The decision to implement Mars Sample Return will not be finalized until NASA’s completion of the National Environmental Policy Act process. This document is being made available for information purposes only.

Contributions

C.D.K.H., T.B., E.M.H., K.H.-L., L.E.M., D.L.S., S.S., J.I.S., B.P.W., M.W., M.-P.Z., J.N.M., K.A.F., and K.M.S. wrote the paper.

Data Availability

All study data are included in the main text.

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