NASA’s Perseverance Rover has collected a rock containing the mineral Olivine. The team tweeted: “Another piece of Mars to take with me.”
This third of three samples that the SUV-sized robot will gather on Red Planet is what it leaves for its future return mission to Earth.
NASA Perseverance, a rover from NASA, landed on Red Planet’s surface in February. The rover is currently making slow progress across Jezero Crater’s 28-mile floor.
US Space Agency tweeted that the latest sample was taken from rock containing greenish mineral Olivine. There are many theories among scientists about how this got there. The possibilities are endless! Science rules.
Although there aren’t any details about these hypotheses, olivine is an iron-magnesium silicate that makes up the bulk of Earth’s upper layer.

NASA Perseverance Rover has collected a rock containing the mineral Olivine. The team tweeted: “Another piece of Mars to take with me.”

This third sample is part of a larger series that the SUV-sized robot will gather on Red Planet. Its data will be used to help with future missions back to Earth.
Each of the 43 titanium tubes carried by the Rover are loaded into one tube.
Back in the early days of our solar system’s existence, billions of years ago, the Jezero Crater had a lake and a river delta. This made it an ideal place to look for signs of life.
Perseverance’s primary purpose is to find chemical fossils or remnants that can point back to long-forgotten microbial life.
It is also firing its laser at the rocks and disturbing soil samples to determine the most effective way of placing it in the titanium tubes.
The Perseverance Team at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory collected the first two samples from the rock referred to as “Rochette” in the early part of September.
NASA had difficulty getting the rock to stick in the tube. NASA blamed the rock’s’surprisingly crumbly’ nature for the success.
The latest sample comes from a rugged dune patch called ‘Séítah,’ the Navajo word meaning ‘amongst the sand’.
This region contains a variety of multi-layered rocks that the JPL team believes might indicate once flowing water.
The space agency tweeted that layered rocks such as this are often formed in water and could hold clues to their past environment.
Erin Gibbons (McGill University, Canada), Perseverance student, says that each layer contains details about the environment when it formed. Layer thicknesses and texture variations indicate changes in the environment.
‘Further, by studying the directions that the layers tilted, we determined that the rocks of Séítah are likely the most ancient rocks exposed in all of Jezero Crater,’ Gibbons wrote in a blog post.
‘Séítah therefore represents the beginning of the accessible geologic record and offers a once-in-a-mission opportunity to explore the full breadth of landscape evolution.’

We don’t know much about the significance of the Olivine Discovery, except that it is a magnesium iron Silicate. It makes up almost all the Earth’s upper mantle.

On November 16, the US space agency posted this tweet: “My most recent sample comes from a rock containing the greenish mineral Olivine. There are many theories among my science team as to how it got there. The possibilities are endless! Science is the ultimate authority
NASA has plans to send 30 samples to Earth by 2030. Scientists will then be able conduct further analysis to confirm the existence of microbial life.
However, Perseverance itself is not bringing the samples back to Earth – when the rover reaches a suitable location, the tubes will dropped on the surface of Mars to be collected by a future retrieval mission, which is currently being developed.
Perseverance will take samples from Mars and drop them in a location suitable for future retrieval missions.
NASA and ESA currently plan to launch two additional spacecraft which will leave Earth by 2026, and return to Mars by 2028.
The first will deploy a small rover, which will make its way to Perseverance, pick up the filled sampling tubes and transfer them to a ‘Mars ascent vehicle’ – a small rocket.

NASA Perseverance, a rover from NASA, landed on Mars in February. The rover is making slow progress across the Jezero Crater floor.

Perseverance has the primary purpose of looking for chemical fossils (or remnants) that could point towards this long-dead microbial life.

It carries 43 titanium tubes. When it discovers a bit of rock that the mission command would like to examine, it places it in one of these tubes and collects it later.
This rocket will blast off – in the process becoming the first object launched from the surface of Mars – and place the container into Martian orbit, meaning it will essentially be floating in space
The third spacecraft, which is the final one involved in this tricky operation, will maneuver itself near the sample container and pick it up before flying it back to Earth.
If it is successful in re-entry to Earth’s atmosphere, the Martian sample won’t even be examined for 10 more years.
Perseverance and perseverance were also required to make the trip to Mars with Ingenuity, a 4-pound (11.8-kilograms) robot helicopter.
The copter has been performing a series of flights of increasing complexity on the Red Planet, starting with its maiden flight on April 19.