Concept art depicts a Mars menagerie of machines that would team to transport to Earth samples of rocks, soil, and atmosphere being collected from the Martian surface by NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA’s Perseverance rover is busily wheeling and dealing with Mars at Jezero Crater, picking up samples of that way off world.
Some of these extraterrestrial goodies are to be express-rocketed to Earth in the 2030’s. Getting that precious freight back to Earth and evaluated in labs is an international and elaborate affair guided by collaboration between NASA and the European Space Agency.
Astronomer Carl Sagan poses with a model of a NASA Viking lander in Death Valley, California. Two Viking landers touched down on Mars in 1976, on a quest to search for life on the Red Planet.
Image credit: NASA/“Cosmos, A Personal Voyage”/Druyan-Sagan Associates, Inc.
Moolah for Mars
Of course, the Mars Sample Return interplanetary relay enterprise is a high-roller undertaking. It will demand lots of moolah, in the multi-billions of dollars.
But the prospective scientific payoff is palpable. Investigators are eager to scope out the bits, pieces, and atmosphere of the Red Planet that will be hurled to Earth.
What are the possible “take away messages” from Mars by heaving samples our way?
Go to my new Space.com article – “The Big Reveal: What’s Ahead in Returning Samples from Mars?” – at:
