How NASA plans to get Mars samples back to Earth.

Collecting samples from Mars and bringing them back to Earth will be a historic undertaking that started with the launch of NASA’s Perseverance rover on July 30, 2020. Perseverance collected its first rock core samples in September 2021. The rover will leave them on Mars for a future mission to retrieve and return to Earth. NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) are solidifying concepts for this proposed Mars Sample Return campaign. The current concept includes a lander, a fetch rover, an ascent vehicle to launch the sample container to Martian orbit, and a retrieval spacecraft with a payload for capturing and containing the samples and then sending them back to Earth to land in an unpopulated area.

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Animation credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech, ESA, NASA/GSFC and NASA/GRC. Technical assistance: James Tralie, NASA Goddard. Music credit: Axel Coon and Ralf Goebel of Universal Production Music.