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Bolted to the front of the rover's chassis, the five-jointed arm carries a large turret that includes a rotary percussive drill to collect core samples of Mars rock and regolith (broken rock and dust). Located on the front of the Perseverance rover, the Sample Caching System itself is composed of three robots, the most visible being the rover's 7-foot-long (2-meter-long) robotic arm. While many people think of the Perseverance rover as one robot, it's actually akin to a collection of robots working together.
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Described as one of the most complex robotic systems ever built, the Sample and Caching System will collect core samples from the rocky surface of Mars, seal them in tubes and leave them for a future mission to retrieve and bring back to Earth. Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover Sample Cache System: Engineers test the Sample Caching System on the Perseverance Mars rover. "For us to collect the first samples of Mars for return to Earth, in place of two astronauts we have three robots that have to work with the precision of a Swiss watch." "While you cannot help but marvel at what was achieved back in the days of Apollo, they did have one thing going for them we don't: boots on the ground," said Adam Steltzner, chief engineer for the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. (The other four tubes had already been loaded into different locations in the Sample Caching System.) The integration of the final tubes marks another key step in preparation for the opening of the rover's launch period on July 17. The final 39 of the 43 sample tubes at the heart of the sample system were loaded, along with the storage assembly that will hold them, aboard NASA's Perseverance rover on May 20 at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. In place of astronauts, the Perseverance rover will rely on the most complex, capable and cleanest mechanism ever to be sent into space, the Sample Caching System. NASA's upcoming Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission will collect the first samples from another planet (the red one) for return to Earth by subsequent missions.
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The samples Apollo 11 brought back to Earth from the Moon were humanity's first from another celestial body. It will take three robotic systems working together to gather up the first Mars rock samples for return to Earth. Two astronauts collected Moon rocks on Apollo 11.