NASA Plans a Mission that Will Bring Rocks from Mars to Earth

NASA’s ambition is going way beyond imagination. Scientists and engineers are planning a mission that will collect rocks from Mars to bring them on Earth for future studies. For this mission to succeed, a particular robot is needed.

NASA, along with the European Space Agency, will send a sophisticated robot rover that will find rocks for the analysis. After the robot is collecting all the samples, the stones will be thrown into space to a spacecraft to collect. After this step, the rocks will drop on Earth with a parachute in the Utah desert.

NASA agrees with this ambitious mission, but it needs ESA’s support for the billion dollars project. The idea of such a task is to collect dust and rocks from Mars to explore here on Earth, the possibility of Martian life. By studying the rocks, scientists can determine if the structure of the samples is similar to the one from Earth. Also, if they have developed in the same conditions. Scientists are looking for evidence of fossil microbes that could live only if the environment had water and a thick atmosphere.

NASA and ESA plan to bring back rocks from Mars

However, studying the dust and rocks from Mars can happen if they are sending spacecraft equipped for analyzing the evidence. Or another method is to search for the meteorites from Mars that are present on Earth.

The first method is complicated because of many factors such as the miniaturize equipment, or the data storage and power supplies. The other way that implies the meteorites from Mars found on Earth is not accurate. After the rocks or pieces are landing on our land, they are contaminated.

To sum up, the best idea is to send NASA’s Mars 2020 rover to collect the samples that will be placed in small metal tubes, sealed, and sent to another craft. The spacecraft will blast the pipes into space, and another robot spacecraft will pick them up and release them in the Utah desert. Scientists are hoping that with this method, they could find evidence of life on Mars, but at the same time, maybe life is not existing at all on the red planet.

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