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.
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Famous quotes containing the words sample, return and/or mission:
“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)
“The mother as a social servant instead of a home servant will not lack in true mother duty.... From her work, loved and honored though it is, she will return to her home life, the child life, with an eager, ceaseless pleasure, cleansed of all the fret and fraction and weariness that so mar it now.”
—Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935)
“Perhaps the mission of those who love mankind is to make people laugh at the truth, to make truth laugh, because the only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane passion for the truth.”
—Umberto Eco (b. 1932)