Mars Sample Return Fact Sheet

NASA's Mars 2020 rover will store rock and soil samples in sealed tubes on the planet's surface for future missions to retrieve, as seen in this illustration.

This setup is being used at JPL to test a 16-inch-diameter (40-centimeter-diameter) footpad for a future Mars lander. The footpad was plunged into a testbed filled with 10,000 pounds (4,536 kilogra...

Two holes are visible in the rock, nicknamed “Rochette,” from which NASA’s Perseverance rover obtained its first core samples. The rover drilled the hole on the left, called “Montagnac,” on Sept. 7...

NASA’s Remote Hypervelocity Test Laboratory is equipped with four 2-stage light gas guns; two 0.17-caliber (0.177-inch bore diameter), a 0.50-caliber (0.50" bore diameter), and a 1-Inch (1.00" bore...

This image taken by NASA's Perseverance rover on Aug. 6, 2021, shows the hole drilled in a Martian rock in preparation for the rover's first attempt to collect a sample. It was taken by one of the ...

Dr. Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate, explains the planned joint NASA/ESA effort to bring to Earth samples being collected on Mars by NASA's Pers...

A mock rocket is thrown into the air at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory during tests of a launch system that would fire a rocket off of Mars.

Aaron Yazzie and others explain how, by scooping dirt and drilling rocks, rovers are digging deeper into the mysteries of Mars.

Celebrate the completion of the first sample depot – or scientifically curated collection of rock and soil samples – on another world with NASA's Perseverance rover team. The diverse set of scienti...

As part of a NASA-ESA campaign to return rock and soil samples from Mars to Earth, engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory are designing a lander which will be the heaviest spacecraft ever to...

This artist's concept of a proposed Mars sample return mission portrays a series of six steps (A through F) in the spacecraft's landing on Mars. NASA and the European Space Agency are collaborating...

Meet the 24th Martian sample collected by NASA's Mars Perseverance rover – "Comet Geyser," a sample taken from a region of Jezero Crater that is especially rich in carbonate, a mineral linked to ha...

An animated flyover of the Martian surface explains why Mars’ Jezero Crater, a 28-mile-wide ancient lake-delta system, is the best place for Mars 2020 to find and collect promising samples for a po...

This annotated map shows the locations where NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover collected its first witness tube and filled its first six samples.

Download a PDF of the Mars Sample Return sticker.

NASA and the European Space Agency are now working together to explore options for a pair of missions that could take the next steps to bring samples back from Mars.

When our Perseverance Mars rover launches on July 30, it's set to be the first leg of a series of sample return missions in the search for evidence of life beyond Earth.

This illustration shows a concept for a proposed NASA Mars lander-and-rocket combination that would play a key role in returning to Earth samples of Mars material collected by the Perseverance rove...

A model Sample Recovery Helicopter drives and positions itself over a sample tube during a test in the Mars Yard at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

This illustration shows a concept of what a rover fetching rock and soil samples on Mars for return to Earth could look like.

This photomontage shows each of the sample tubes deposited by NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover at the “Three Forks” sample depot, as viewed by the WATSON camera on the end of the rover’s robotic arm.

Engineers use OPTIMISM, a full-size replica of NASA’s Perseverance rover, to test how it will deposit its first sample tube on the Martian surface. The test was conducted in the Mars Yard at JPL.

This image taken by the Mastcam-Z camera aboard NASA's Perseverance rover on Sept. 4, 2021, confirmed that the rover had retained a rock core in the sample tube held in the drill at the end of its ...

This illustration shows the proposed Capture, Containment, and Return System, a NASA payload on the European Space Agency’s Earth Return Orbiter. 

Engineers successfully completed a series of Mars Sample Return (MSR) Earth Entry System (EES) drop tests at the Utah Test and Training Range (UTTR). A Manufacturing Demonstration Unit (MDU) of one...