Returning Mars Samples to Earth
0Returning Mars Samples to Earth
NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) are working to plan ways to bring the first samples of Mars rock and broken rock/dust back to Earth for detailed study. The Mars Perseverance rover is the first leg of this international interplanetary relay team. Its job is to collect and cache samples on Mars. Two Mars Sample Return missions are planned to follow in Perseverance's footsteps to the vicinity of Jezero Crater. The first would land near or in Jezero, collect and then launch the sample cache off the Red Planet. The second would capture it in Mars orbit, and then bring it back to Earth safely and securely in the early to mid 2030s. These first collected and returned samples could answer a key question: did life ever exist on Mars? Only by bringing the samples back can we truly answer the question by using the most sophisticated, state-of-the-art labs, at a time when future generations can study them using techniques yet to be invented.