Perseverance rover scouts flat landing spots for NASA’s next Mars lander

In addition to collecting samples at Jezero Crater's ancient river delta, NASA's Perseverance Mars rover is busy scouting locations where the planned Mars Sample Return (MSR) Campaign can land spacecraft and collect sample tubes the rover has filled with rock and sediment.

MSR is a strategic partnership between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency) aimed at retrieving and delivering samples of that faraway terrain for intensive study in laboratories on Earth to look for signs of past microscopic life on the Red Planet. This partnership would be the first mission to return samples from another planet and the first launch from the surface of another planet.

According to NASA, the MSR Entry, Descent, and Landing team is looking for a pancake-flat landing zone with a 200-foot (60-meter) radius. The team calls the area they've been looking at the "landing strip" because it appears to be as flat and long as a runway in the images taken from spacecraft in orbit.

"The Perseverance team pulled out all the stops for us because Mars Sample Return has unique needs when it comes to where we operate. Essentially, a dull landing place is good. The flatter and more uninspiring the vista, the better we like it, because while there are a lot of things that need to be done when we arrive to pick up the samples, sightseeing is not one of them," said MSR Program Manager Richard Cook of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

NASA's Perseverance has cored, collected, and sealed nine samples of Mars rock to date. The rover is planned to drop, or cache, sample tubes on the surface to await later retrieval during MSR surface operations.

I'm a geologist, meteorologist, photographer, etc. Now I can add "location scout" to the list. I've been scoping out spots where Mars Sample Return spacecraft could set up operations – including the first launchpad on another planet.Read more: https://t.co/6PN4RmBgjH pic.twitter.com/5Jo7X1DW0Q

— NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover (@NASAPersevere) July 11, 2022