NASA has revealed where samples collected on Mars will be handled once they make it back to Earth.
The space agency just announced the launch of its Mars Sample Receiving Project office at Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston. The office will be housed within JSC’s Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science division and will oversee the first samples returned to Earth from the Red Planet.
This material will be vital to humanity’s understanding of Mars and other rocky planets as well as aid in the search for past life on Mars, NASA officials have said. Bringing these pristine samples to Earth will allow for advanced chemical analyses that are beyond the capabilities of the rovers that are currently exploring the Red Planet’s surface.
Related: How NASA and ESA will bring Perseverance’s Mars samples to Earth
JSC has considerable experience in processing and curating samples collected beyond Earth.
“NASA Johnson houses the largest and most diverse collection of astromaterials in the world, beginning with samples returned from the Apollo program,” JSC Director Vanessa Wyche said in a statement (opens in new tab) on Monday (Jan. 23). “With our expertise, we look forward to managing the project that will receive scientifically compelling Mars samples gathered by the NASA Perseverance rover.”
Perseverance is currently collecting samples from Jezero Crater on Mars, which held an ancient river delta and a lake more than 3.5 billion years ago. Scientists believe that, if microbial life once existed in this region, lakebed or shoreline sediments collected by Perseverance could contain telltale traces of it.
Perseverance made history in December 2022 when it dropped its first sample tubes onto the Martian surface, at a patch of Jezero’s floor that the mission team calls Three Forks. Perseverance will drop a total of 10 tubes, each of which resembles the handle of a “Star Wars” lightsaber, at the Three Forks depot, for possible future collection by a Mars sample return mission campaign.
NASA is currently working with the European Space Agency (ESA) on that campaign, which will consist of several elements, including Perseverance.
A NASA-built sample return lander is scheduled to launch in 2028, then touch down inside the 28-mile-wide (45 kilometers) Jezero. Perseverance’s samples will be ferried to the lander by either the rover itself or by two small Mars helicopters carried by the lander. Those choppers will be similar to NASA’s Ingenuity, which landed with…
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