The Perseverance rover spent its first several months on Mars supporting the testing of the Ingenuity helicopter. Now that Ingenuity has zipped ahead on the travel path, Percy is getting to focus on doing some science while it roves. A major part of its mission is the collection of rock samples that will eventually be retrieved by another rover and rocket and brought back to Earth. The first sample is going to be collected from a region that is lined with cracked stones and scattered with rocks. It is estimated that it will take the rover eleven days to photographically document the region, have scientists pick the spot, and then for Percy to prepare its tools for the sample collection and actually collect the sample. Then we just wait a decade or so for the sample return mission.

Science is a long game.

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NASA press release