A tray holding 39 sample tubes headed to Mars is installed into the Perseverance rover on May 21, 2020, in a clean room at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida during final installation for launch. Each tube is enveloped in its own gold-colored titanium sheath that protects it until the sample handling arm within the rover retrieves it to begin the process of collecting a sample of Martian rock or regolith (dust and crushed rock). In total, the rover carries 43 sample tubes.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California built and will manage operations of the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover for NASA.

For more information about the mission, go to: https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020.