The Perseverance rover landed on the surface of the Red Planet on February 18, 2021. And since then it has been studying the western part of Jezero Crater every Martian day (sol), surveying the Martian surface and, most importantly, collecting samples that will be attempted to be delivered to Earth sometime in the early 2030s.
And just the other day, the rover took another sample, processed it, placed it in a special container, and dropped that container on the surface, completing the formation of a kind of open-air warehouse from which these containers would be removed for delivery to Earth. This last sample was taken on January 28, 2023, nearly a year after the rover took the very first sample on January 31, 2022.
The Perseverance rover has now collected a total of 27 full sample containers, plus one sealed but empty container that will be used for pollution control. These samples were collected by the rover at various sites in the Jezero Crater that were considered the most promising in terms of the information they contain about the geological, hydrological, climatological and astrobiological past of Mars.
Ten of the containers have already been dropped on the surface of the planet, 5 to 15 meters apart, along the zigzag path of the rover. But these containers, as we told you before, are only a backup, they will be used if the rover for some reason will not be able to get to the Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission vehicle on its own and reload the remaining 17 containers on board into the cargo bay of the Mars Ascent Vehicle. In more detail about the stages and options for the MSR mission we told you last time and repeating it all now does not make the slightest sense.
Now that the rover has filled the "open-air warehouse" and its inner vault, it will move further along the ancient river delta, moving away from the storage site called Three Forks. This delta was formed several billion years ago when rivers existed on Mars, one of which flowed into the Jezero crater, turning it into a huge lake.