NASA has announced the establishment of a facility designed to keep Mars rock samples currently being collected by the Perseverance Mars rover in Jezero Crater. Scientists believe that the rock samples are materials that may reveal clues of ancient Martian life.
As per the announcement, the new facility would be housed at the Johnson Space Center in Houston and will be aimed at "gathering and curating" the highly rare rocks as carefully as possible.
Mars Sample Receiving Project
The new initiative is known as the Mars Sample Receiving (MSR) project with the aim to be the most complex robotic space flight campaign in history. NASA said that it is scheduled to kick off in about a decade once the samples were sent to Earth.
Admittedly, the project of receiving the rock samples being prepared by the Perseverance rover on Mars is not an easy task. It will have to be picked up by a rover of the European Space Agency, which is still in development before it can make its way to the Red Planet.
The new facility will be responsible for receiving and curating the first Martian rock samples for their safe and rapid release to laboratories worldwide for scientific investigations. The office will be at Johnson's Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science division where experts in processing and curating extraterrestrial samples will handle them.
Johnson Center Director Vanessa Wyche said that they house the largest and most diverse collection of materials from space, such as those returned samples from the Apollo missions. With their expertise in handling such materials, they are confident in managing the project that will receive scientifically compelling Mars samples.
Furthermore, Jhonson will be working with NASA's Mars Exploration Program in developing design plans for the sample recovery and subsequent transition for scientific investigations. That means they will be handling the recovery, containment, transfer, safety assessment, curating, and coordinating scientific investigations of the samples that are expected to arrive on Earth in 2033.
NASA noted that the key objective of the Perseverance rover's mission on the Red Planet is astrobiology or finding signs of ancient microbial life. The rover is currently characterizing the geology and past climate of Mars to pave way for future human exploration of the Red Planet, making the Mars Sample Return Program essential for human exploration of Mars.
Not Everyone is Happy
Despite the prospect benefits of collecting and studying Martian rock samples to improve human knowledge of its neighboring planet, not everyone is happy of bring extraterrestrial materials to Earth.
As per Futurism's previous report, some scientists have voiced their concerns about NASA's plans in the past to have the Air Force house the rock samples as it could end up mishandling potentially dangerous alien contaminants.
Last May, Louisiana State University geologist Peter Doran told NPR that although there is a low probability of any living thing on the Martian surface, it is still possible.
So, NASA released a factsheet that says scientists "have found an extremely low likelihood that samples collected from areas on Mars like those being explored" given the fact that Martian meteorites have been crashing into Earth for many years now. That means the project will be handled by scientists who are experts in the field and not by the military.
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