NASA’s Ambitious Mission to Bring Martian Samples to Earth

NASA’s Ambitious Mission to Bring Martian Samples to Earth

NASA’s new Mars rover is launching this summer. It’s humanity’s first step to studying the Martian surface like never before, and its impact will be on par with the Apollo missions.

Mars sample return has been a high priority for the scientific community for a long time, and an upcoming launch is an ambitious new chapter in Mars exploration.

A Mars Sample-Return mission is exactly what it sounds like—a spaceflight mission to the red planet to collect rock and dust samples and bring them back to Earth.

This mission’s landing site is Jezero Crater, and the launch of the new Mars rover is the first step in a series of proposed missions over the span of a decade to bring samples back, with all of the source material.

In this Focal Point, we speak with Eric Aguilar, Mars 2020 System Testbed Manager at NASA/JPL, and Chris Herd, PhD, a Mars 2020 Return Sample Scientist and Professor at the University of Alberta, to learn more about the mission to Mars.

The rover is slated to launch this summer, watch to find out more about its upcoming journey across the red planet.