When the Perseverance rover arrived on Mars in February 2021, the American space agency knew that a long mission had just begun. In addition to the work done by the robot on the ground of the planet Mars, rock samples taken from the crater of Jezero will make the way back to 2030 to be analyzed on Earth.
In order to accommodate them in the best possible conditions, NASA has just announced the creation of a laboratory specially dedicated to the study of these few grams of matter. At the heart of sterile test tubes, these pieces of rock contain hundreds of information about our neighbor’s past, and evidence of a possible life that existed on the surface of the latter.
MSR: NASA’s most ambitious project
One of 30 test tubes left on Mars by the Perseverance rover. They will be brought back to Earth by the MSR program © NASA
The sample return program is expected to begin with the MSR liftoff for Mars Sample Return. According to the space agency it is the “most complex theft campaign in history”. Going to Mars is already a difficult task, only China and the United States have succeeded, but no one has yet managed to tear themselves away from the gravitational forces of the red planet to make the way back.
This great first is therefore a leap into the unknown for NASA. Confident, she assures that the mission will go perfectly well and that the samples will arrive as far as Houston, Texas. In the agency’s control center, a special laboratory will come out of the ground to protect these rocks from possible terrestrial disturbances, and vice versa.
By bringing pieces of the planet Mars back to Earth, scientists do not know what to expect and the risk of unknown diseases as well as contaminations is very great. Concern is therefore warranted in the same way as hope. The hope of finding traces of past life in these pieces of rock.
Studying Mars to better understand Earth’s history
Such evidence would confirm that we were not alone in the Universe and that life is capable of developing outside of Earth. This would also make it possible to understand what were the living conditions on the surface of Mars and thus to make the genesis of the red planet.
Knowing about Mars’ past will allow scientists to understand how life and matter can evolve over time. For researchers, such knowledge can help design models of the evolution of our planet, Earth. By understanding the causes that caused life to disappear on Mars, science hopes to be able to prevent humanity from such a fate.
