It's amazing how many interesting and breakthrough space exploration programs are being run at the same time. When it comes to government-backed space agencies alone, we've got the Artemis push for the exploration (and initial colonization) of the Moon, the work performed by the Webb space telescope, and the prep work for perhaps the most ambitious space mission ever designed, the Mars Sample Return.
As its name says, the mission is the one that will bring back to Earth, for the first time, pieces of an alien world, to be properly studied. With the actual Mars Sample Return hardware not scheduled to take off before 2027, the mission itself is already ongoing.
Having landed on the Red Planet in 2021 with a ton of missions to complete, the Perseverance rover was given another one in a short time: pick up samples of Martian soil and get them ready for retrieval.
We learned back in February that Perseverance had already completed its first Mars sample depot. That's a fancy name for sample-containing titanium tubes being dropped at set locations on the surface of the planet. This depot, and the ones to follow, are a sort of backup for the samples to rover stores inside itself, a safety measure in case these cannot be retrieved for some reason.
We know how the rover pickups up soil samples and how it stores them, but this week we also got a taste of how the robots currently being built for the mission are going to collect these tubes.
You see, the Mars Sample Return will rely on several distinct pieces of tech. There's the Earth Return Orbiter, the lander, a rover, some helicopters, and an ascent vehicle.
It's the new rover's and helicopters' job to go out and retrieve the samples deposited by Perseverance. They'll do so using robotic arms commanded from very far away. And it's exactly the methods to be used that are currently being tested over in Europe.
The European Space Agency (ESA) it's a major part of the Mars Sample Return mission. The agency is using a facility in the Netherlands called the ESTEC technical center, where a test ned nicknamed the Mars Yard is, to put sample retrieving gear and procedures through their paces.
First up, the Mars Yard holds replicas of the tubes on Mars. They are called in official speak Returnable Sample Tube Assembly (RTSA), and ESA has gone as far as to compare them to the lightsabers we're all so familiar with from Star Wars. Because of their shape, of course...
The tubes are being handled with a robotic transfer arm backed by sensors, cameras, and even neural networks. All of this tech is required for the arm to properly detect the tubes, correctly position itself, and eventually grab the lightsabers. Once the tube is snatched, the arm has to deposit inside the rover.
You can see some of the action, and get a taste to how this whole is going to go in the short video attached below. Star Wars images not included, of course.
Daniel loves writing (or so he claims), and he uses this skill to offer readers a "behind the scenes" look at the automotive industry. He also enjoys talking about space exploration and robots, because in his view the only way forward for humanity is away from this planet, in metal bodies. Full profile
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