Final Thermal Design of the Mars 2020 Sample Tube

The Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover landed on Mars, in Jezero Crater, on February 18, 2021. One of the primary mission objectives for the Perseverance Rover is to collect and cache a set of Martian rock and regolith samples for potential future return to Earth. Samples will be collected and placed into sample tubes using a Coring Drill (Corer) located at the end of a large Robotic Arm. Filled sample tubes will be transferred from the outside of the Rover into the Adaptive Caching Assembly (ACA), located inside the Rover chassis, via the Bit Carousel. Once a filled sample tube is brought into the ACA, the Sample Handling Assembly (SHA) will transfer it to all of the internal processing stations of the ACA for volume assessment, sealing and finally drop-off on the Martian surface. The sample tubes could remain on the Mars surface for as long as 10 years. In order to preserve the sample’s scientific integrity, the sample tube temperature may not exceed 60°C. This paper documents the bounding flight temperature predictions for the final Mars 2020 Sample Tube design, lying on the Mars surface, in the Jezero Crater landing site. This paper discusses the thermal design of the sample tube that uses passive thermal control coatings to keep the sample below its maximum allowable temperature limit of 60°C, during exposure to the Mars surface environment.