Sending the first astronauts to Mars is hard enough, as space agencies still struggle to find out exactly how to do it. But perhaps bringing rock samples from the Red Planet in order to study them up-close on Earth will be a lot easier.
NASA is now aiming to bring Martian material to our planet, but as expected, this mission won’t be any child’s play as well. The space agency’s goal is to learn more about the environment of the Red Planet.
NASA will bring Martian rocks by 2033
TODAY’s YouTube channel brings the news regarding NASA’s goal of bringing Martian rocks to Earth, and we can all consider ourselves lucky to be living during such a period in human history!
Of course, the question that lies in everybody’s mind is this: will NASA find any traces of life on Mars? While astronomers are pretty sure that there’s nothing resembling little green men dwelling on our neighboring planet, the possibility of microbial life remains valid.
Last month, we shared the news that astronomers might have been looking for signs of alien life on Mars in completely wrong places.
Alexander Pavlov from the Goddard Space Flight Center of NASA stated:
Our results suggest that amino acids are destroyed by cosmic rays in the Martian surface rocks and regolith at much faster rates than previously thought,
Current Mars rover missions drill down to about 2 inches (around 5 centimeters). At those depths, it would take only 20 million years to destroy amino acids completely. The addition of perchlorates and water increases the rate of amino acid destruction even further.
NASA’s Perseverance rover is included in the Mars Exploration Program of NASA. The Mars 2020 rover mission is also part of the program.