Exploring Mars with Returned Samples
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Exploring Mars with Returned Samples Monica M. Grady1
Received: 5 November 2019 / Accepted: 17 April 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract The international Mars Exploration community has been planning to return samples from Mars for many years; the next decade should see the plans becoming a reality. Mars Sample Return (MSR) requires a series of missions, first to collect the samples, then to return them to Earth, whilst preventing the contamination of both Earth and Mars. The first mission in the campaign, Mars 2020, will land at Jezero Crater in early 2021; samples should return to Earth sometime after 2032. The information to be derived from analysis of martian samples in terrestrial laboratories equipped with state-of-the-art instrumentation is more than recompense for the difficulties of the MSR campaign. Results from analyses of returned samples will enable increased understanding of martian geological (and possibly biological) evolution. They will facilitate preparations for human exploration of Mars and by providing a second set of absolute ages for a planetary surface will validate (or otherwise) application of the lunar crater-age scale throughout the Solar System. Keywords Mars-sample-return · MSR · Mars · Jezero
1 Introduction Ever since the Mariner 9 mission of 1971-2 returned images of the martian landscape showing networks of craters, dried-up river valleys and towering (but extinct) volcanoes (Mutch and Saunders 1976), it has been known that Mars experienced impact, fluvial, volcanic and aeolian processes – and a potential for martian life to develop. Knowledge of the extent and complexity of these processes has increased in detail with each succeeding space mission. We now have global scale coverage of the planet at visible wavelengths and almost Role of Sample Return in Addressing Major Questions in Planetary Sciences Edited by Mahesh Anand, Sara Russell, Yangting Lin, Meenakshi Wadhwa, Kuljeet Kaur Marhas and Shogo Tachibana
B M.M. Grady
[email protected]
1
School of Physical Sciences, The Open University, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, UK
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Fig. 1 (a) The EETA 79001 meteorite, showing areas of black glass on its cut-surface (image credit NASA-JSC); (b) Compositional evidence that gas trapped inside EETA 79001 has the same composition as Mars’ atmosphere (reproduced from Pepin 1985)
total coverage in the infrared. We know the distribution of craters across the planet’s surface, the location of the main volcanic regions, the existence of a complex network of fluvial features and the composition and dynamic properties of the atmosphere. This has given us a broad idea of Mars’ evolutionary history based on a relative chronology that ties together the different processes (Tanaka 1986). Changes in mineralogy brought about by aqueous alteration have been observed from orbit and at the landing sites of the Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity rovers (e.g., Ehlmann and Edwards 2014; Ruff and Farmer 2016; Bedford et al. 2019). These changes, when related to a cratering chron
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