At best, it will be more than a decade before the samples collected by NASA's Perseverance rover reach Earth.
NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) are working together on a joint mission to deliver to Earth the samples collected by Perseverance at the bottom of the 45-kilometre Jezero crater - the Jezero crater. from a Space. According to NASA, the Jezero crater is a paradise for researchers, as billions of years ago there was a large lake and a river delta in the area, so it is possible that researchers could find traces of life.
The original plan was for researchers to launch a sample-carrying vehicle in 2026, which would carry the vials of rock and dust fragments to an orbiting vehicle that would return to Earth sometime in 2031. However, the schedule has been changed, as NASA has decided that a second lander will have to be developed, so that the primary vehicle carrying the vials will not be launched until 2028 at the earliest, and the delivery of the samples to Earth will be delayed until 2033.
The Perseverance rover was launched from Earth in July 2020 and landed in the Jezero crater last February. One of the Mars rover's greatest scientific achievements is that it has succeeded in proving that the Jezero crater may once have been water.
