Daring Mars mission to send rocks back to Earth in hunt for past life

[Judi Lynn]

Europe poised to join US in complex plan to find evidence of fossil microbes on red planet

Robin McKie
Sun 24 Nov 2019 04.03 EST

Engineers plan to collect rocks on Mars and bring samples to Earth, in one of the most complex robot space projects envisaged. The scheme, being developed by Nasa and the European Space Agency (Esa), will involve robot rovers finding rocks that might contain evidence of past life.

The samples would be blasted into space, intercepted by an unmanned spacecraft, and dropped by parachute in the Utah desert, with the 500g of Martian soil and rock shared with researchers round the world.

Nasa recently gave outline approval for such a mission – which will cost billions of pounds – and research ministers from Esa’s member states will meet in Seville this week to decide if they will support it. The UK is a leading partner in Esa, and its membership is unconnected to Brexit.

“The Mars Sample Return is a key part of our future exploration programme, and I very much hope Europe’s science ministers will back it,” Jan Wörner, Esa’s director general, said last week. “However, we should be clear that every step of the mission is going to be very challenging.”

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/nov/24/mars-robot-will-send-samples-to-earth

[Newest Reality]

1. Ah,

We remember when the zombie virus pandemic started. The payload of The Mars Sample return was released when the return capsule ruptured on reentry. At first, there were some strange outbreaks of horrifying diseases that would either mutate a person beyond recognition into some sort of alien lifeform, or that would result in thousands of slow, painful deaths, where death was relief.

That would have been bad enough, but when the dead starting walking and attacking people, it was exactly like we have seen in movies and TV shows for decades. At recent count there are hundreds of thousands of corpses roaming and cannibalizing the living in almost every country now. It is worse than a nightmare. It is Hell on Earth!

[LastLiberal in PalmSprings]

2. A similar plot was used in the movie "The Andromeda Strain"

Based on a novel by Michael Crichton.

[Newest Reality]

3. Yes...

I am ancient enough to remember when that came out Thanks.