The mission is a necessary step to gain experience to ever land humans on Mars, says Philippe Schoonejans. He is involved in the European part of the project on behalf of ESA. “What we learn with these missions is extremely important. Manned missions will last another fifteen years. In the meantime, science has the empire left for a while, without the risk of Mars becoming infected with terrestrial organisms.”
Schoonejans is leading the construction of a robotic arm that will place the soil samples from Perseverance in a small rocket to shoot them into space – one of the many steps that must go well. “The rovers have to land in the same place, they have to work well. Then a missile has to be launched from Mars, that has never been done, just like a return to Earth. If something goes wrong, you have learned a lot, but then you have no stones. “
Origin of life
Ultimately, scientists hope with the soil samples to better understand the conditions on Mars billions of years ago, when the planet had an even denser atmosphere and water was flowing. Inge Loes ten Kate, astrobiologist at Utrecht University, is looking forward to the new data. She was also closely involved with Curiosity’s mission, which had a small laboratory on board to investigate soil samples.
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