Sample return from Mars. Artist rendering of a Mars sample return mission. The mission would use robotic systems and a Mars ascent rocket to collect and send samples of Martian rocks, soils and atmosphere to Earth for detailed chemical and physical analysis.  No rocket has ever taken off from Mars and this NASA and European Space Agency (ESA) project is in early planning stages. Still, blue-ribbon science panels have recommended efforts to begin preparing the public for an eventual Mars sample return. ( Wickman Spacecraft & Propulsion)

For space scientists of all stripes, few goals are as crucial as bringing pieces of Mars, of asteroids, of other planets and moons back to Earth for the kind of intensive study only possible here.  Space missions can, and have, told us many truths about the solar system,  but having a piece of Mars or Europa or an asteroid to study in a lab on Earth is considered the gold standard for learning about the actual composition of other bodies, their histories and whether they could — or once did — harbor life.

In keeping with this ambition, the last National Research Council Decadal Survey listed a Mars “sample return” as the top science priority for large Flagship missions.  And the Perseverance rover that NASA is scheduled to send to Mars next month will — among many other tasks — identify compelling rock samples, collect and cache them so a subsequent mission can pick them up and fly them to Earth.

Two asteroid sample return missions are also in progress, the NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission to Bennu and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA’s)  Hayabusa2 mission to the Ryugu.  Both spacecraft are at or have already left their intended targets now and are expected to return with rock samples later this decade, with Hayabusa2 scheduled to complete its round trip later this year.

An illustration of the coronavirus. (Centers of Disease Control)

So sample return is in our future.  And in the case of Mars the samples will not with 100 percent certainty be lifeless — a major difference from the samples brought back from the moon during the Apollo missions and the samples coming from asteroids.

This possibility of a spacecraft bringing back something biological — as in the 1969 book “The Andromeda Strain” — has always been viewed as a very low probability but high risk hazard, and much thinking has already gone into how to bring samples back safely.… Read more