An illustration of NASA’s Perseverance rover, which is due to land on Mars in February 2021. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)
How to get rocks back from Mars
The US and European space agencies have unveiled a daring plan to bring the first rocks back from Mars. The samples will be collected by NASA’s Perseverance rover, which is due to launch in the coming months. The ambitious interplanetary pilgrimage to return the rocks will involve two spacecraft that travel to Mars in 2026: a small rocket that will blast off the Martian surface, carrying the rocks into orbit, where a second craft will take them and fly back to Earth by 2031. “This is by no means a simple task,” says Jim Watzin, head of NASA’s Mars exploration programme in Washington DC. “But we have kept it as simple as possible.”
Nature | 4 min read
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