Installing Perseverance’s Sample Tubes

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Caption:

A tray holding 39 sample tubes headed to Mars is installed into the Perseverance rover on May 21, 2020, in a clean room at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida during final installation for launch. Each tube is enveloped in its own gold-colored titanium sheath that protects it until the sample handling arm within the rover retrieves it to begin the process of collecting a sample of Martian rock or regolith (dust and crushed rock). In total, the rover carries 43 sample tubes.

Background Info:

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California built and will manage operations of the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover for NASA.

For more information about the mission, go to: https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020 .

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