Mars Sample Return: From Collection To Curation Of Samples From A Habitable World
NASA’s Mars 2020 mission has initiated collection of samples from Mars’ Jezero Crater, which has a wide range of ancient rocks and rock types from lavas to lacustrine sedimentary rocks. The Mars Sample Return (MSR) Campaign, a joint effort between NASA and ESA, aims to bring the Perseverance collection back to Earth for intense scientific investigation.
As the first return of samples from a habitable world, there are important challenges to overcome for the successful implementation of the MSR Campaign from the point of sample collection on Mars to the long-term curation of the samples on Earth. In particular, the successful execution of planetary protection protocols adds well-warranted complexity to every step of the process from the two MSR Program flight elements to the ground element at the sample receiving facility (SRF).
In this contribution, we describe the architecture of the MSR Campaign, with a focus on infrastructure needs for the curation (i.e., the clean storage, processing, and allocation) of pristine Martian samples. Curation is a science-enabling and planetary protection-enabling activity, and the curation practices described in this contribution for the SRF and any long-term curation facility will enable the sample safety assessment, initial scientific investigations of the samples, and establish the MSR collection as a scientific resource that will enable generations of science and discovery through studies of the returned Mars samples.
The planetary protection and curation processes established for MSR will provide critical insights into potential future sample return missions from other habitable worlds like Enceladus and Europa.
Notional MSR Campaign architecture The cartoon is intended to demonstrate functional steps for the MSR Campaign and, other than the Mars 2020 Mission, may not represent the final campaign mission architecture. — PNAS via PubMed
The origin and history of the solar system, as well as the origin and history of its distinct parent bodies, are chronicled within the solar system rock record. That rock record could hold clues about some of the most interesting phenomena that humanity seeks to understand, such as the origin of life and the process of abiogenesis, the processes that have led to the diversity in parent bodies across the solar system, and the sources of material that comprise our solar system.
For centuries, humans have used the Earth’s rock record to understand Earth’s natural history and to understand life’s origins. The latter remains one of the most important unanswered questions of our time. Although we have excellent access to Earth’s surface and near-surface rocks, Earth represents only one of many planetary bodies that comprise the solar system.
Extraterrestrial samples enable comparisons between Earth and other worlds, allowing us to further develop an understanding of natural processes beyond Earth. Furthermore, the ubiquitous secondary overprint of Earth’s crustal rocks coupled with active plate tectonics has further limited what can be gleaned about early Earth from its own rock record.
Our access to other portions of the solar system rock record is limited to the extraterrestrial samples we can collect on Earth such as meteorites and cosmic dust, as well as material that we collect on other parent bodies and return to Earth through robotic and human space exploration.
Analyses of these astromaterials have led to unprecedented advances in our understanding of Earth and the solar system broadly, including the development of models for the origin of the Earth–Moon system (1–4), the age of our solar system (5), the bulk compositions of planets and the solar system (6, 7), and identification of many of the fundamental processes that have governed and shaped the solar system and its parent bodies to this point (8–14).
However, much remains unknown, and each new extraterrestrial sample or set of samples we acquire helps to further elucidate the formation and evolution of our solar system and its parent bodies, including Earth. One lesson learned through decades of planetary sample science is that the scientific value of any sample from the solar system is impactful beyond the parent body from which it was derived and adds to our overall knowledge of the solar system rock record.
Mars Sample Return: From Collection To Curation Of Samples From A Habitable World, PNAS via PubMed (open access)
Astrobiology,
