Sample Return Mission

A sample return mission is a spacecraft mission with the goal of collecting and returning with tangible samples from an extraterrestrial location to Earth for analysis. Sample return missions may bring back merely atoms and molecules or a deposit of complex compounds such as loose material ("soil") and rocks. These samples may be obtained in a number of ways, including a collector array used for capturing particles of solar wind or cometary debris, soil and rock excavation, mining, and any other possible way for retrieving samples in the environment.

Read more about Sample Return Mission:  Relevance of Samples From Solar System Bodies, See Also

Famous quotes containing the words sample, return and/or mission:

    All that a city will ever allow you is an angle on it—an oblique, indirect sample of what it contains, or what passes through it; a point of view.
    Peter Conrad (b. 1948)

    A pun does not commonly justify a blow in return. But if a blow were given for such cause, and death ensued, the jury would be judges both of the facts and of the pun, and might, if the latter were of an aggravated character, return a verdict of justifiable homicide.
    Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)

    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)