A Mars sample return mission (MSR) would be a spaceflight mission to collect rock and dust samples from Mars and to return them to Earth. Sample return is very powerful type of exploration, because analysis is freed from the time, budget, and space constraints of spacecraft sensors. All of Earth's laboratories can potentially study a sample.
According to Louis Friedman, Executive Director of The Planetary Society, Mars sample return is often described by the planetary science community as the "holy grail" of robotic space missions, due to its high expected scientific return-on-investment.
Over time several missions were planned but none of the proposed missions got beyond the planning phase. The three latest proposals for a MSR mission are a NASA-ESA proposal, a Russian proposal, Mars-Grunt, and a Chinese proposal.
MSR was highest priority in the Planetary Decadal Survey 2013-2022: The Future of Planetary Science.
Read more about Mars Sample Return Mission: Scientific Value, History, SCIM, NASA-ESA Plan, NASA Proposals, Mars-Grunt, Chinese Plans
Famous quotes containing the words mars, sample, return and/or mission:
“But in the dome of mighty Mars the red,”
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)
“The present war having so long cut off all communication with Great-Britain, we are not able to make a fair estimate of the state of science in that country. The spirit in which she wages war is the only sample before our eyes, and that does not seem the legitimate offspring either of science or of civilization.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“Yet I shall never return to the past, that attic.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“Man is eminently a storyteller. His search for a purpose, a cause, an ideal, a mission and the like is largely a search for a plot and a pattern in the development of his life story—a story that is basically without meaning or pattern.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)