A novel robotic arm will carry samples from Mars and transport them back to Earth, according to a statement released by the European Space Agency (ESA) on Thursday, Jan. 26.

During the mission to bring samples of Martian soil back to Earth, a European robotic arm of 2.5 meters in length will pick up tubes containing the dirt and transfer them to a rocket for a historical cosmic delivery.

'Sample Transfer Arm'

As featured on Interesting Engineering, the Sample Transfer Arm (STA) robot is essential to the success of the Mars Sample Return mission. It can operate without human intervention and is said to be quite dependable and sturdy, making it a good fit for a one-of-a-kind task such as this.

With the help of two cameras and a plethora of sensors, the robot can produce a wide variety of motions with seven degrees of flexibility. And as described by ESA, it has a gripper, which is like a hand to grab and handle the sample tubes at diverse angles.

However, the robotic arm has not yet arrived on Mars. While NASA's Perseverance rover is now gathering samples from the surface of the Red Planet, the ESA has announced that the SAT will soon land there to retrieve the tubes.

ESA explained that the arm's ability to see, feel, and take autonomous judgments and a high degree of dexterity enable it to remove the tubes from the rover, pick them up off the Martian ground, place them into a container, and shut the lid before taking off from Mars.

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Martian Endeavors

Last February, the Mars Perseverance rover celebrated one year on the Red Planet. As planned, NASA's $2.7 billion robotic explorer Perseverance was gently released on the alien planet on February 18, 2021.

Since the 1970s, when NASA first began investigating the possibility of life on Mars, this event marks the agency's most concerted and comprehensive endeavor to date. Collecting a wide range of samples for return to Earth for further research supports that effort.

The robotic device will link up with the ESA's Earth Return Orbiter (ERO), which will collect the canisters containing samples from Mars and return them to Earth. Samples from the expedition, a collaboration between NASA and ESA, are expected to return within the next decade, in 2033 at the earliest.

Life on Mars

The organizations anticipate finding fossilized remains of extinct creatures among the samples. They also mention the very low likelihood that any biological creatures are present in the specimens.

But because of the increased risk of biocontamination, this raises the issue of whether or not it is safe to transport such microbes back to Earth.

The agencies have previously claimed that the possibility of bringing back live organisms is very low and that the risk of human contamination of Mars' clean, unspoiled environment is equivalent to Martian contamination of Earth.

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