It took Mars rover NASA Perseverance less than six weeks to create the first soil sample cache on the Red Planet, which is planned to be sent to Earth in the future. Recently, the Martian rover successfully dropped the capsule with its tenth and final sample. It took extremely precise navigation management to make sure the samples could be easily collected and delivered for study on Earth.

As it moved around the Red Planet, the rover took two samples each time as requested by the scientists. One of each pair of samples remains on board Perseverance, while the other was left in the Three Forks region of Jezero crater. The samples left in the cache will be a reserve in case the primary samples for some reason cannot be delivered to the Sample Retrieval Lander for sending to Earth.