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Perspectives on Mars Sample Return: A critical resource for planetary science and exploration.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A
January 2025
Division of Earth and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125.
Mars Sample Return (MSR) has been the highest flagship mission priority in the last two Planetary Decadal Surveys of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (hereafter, "the National Academies") and was the highest priority flagship for Mars in the Decadal Survey that preceded them. This inspirational and challenging campaign, like the Apollo program's returned lunar samples, will potentially revolutionize our understanding of Mars and help inform how other planets are explored. MSR's technological advances will keep the NASA and European Space Agency at the forefront of planetary exploration, and data on returned samples will fill knowledge gaps for future human exploration.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFundamental constraints and questions from the study of martian meteorites and the need for returned samples.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A
January 2025
School of Geographical and Earth Sciences, Gregory Building, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, Scotland.
Physical materials from planetary bodies are crucial for understanding fundamental processes that constrain the evolution of the solar system, as samples can be analyzed at high precision and accuracy in Earth-based laboratories. Mars is the only planet outside of Earth from which we possess samples in the form of meteorites. Martian meteorites (n > 350) have enabled constraints to be placed on various aspects of the red planet's formation and evolution, notably: that Mars accreted and differentiated rapidly; that the planet has a complex volatile element evolution; and that it has always been volcanically active with a rich and diverse magmatic history.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWhat we can learn about Mars from the magnetism of returned samples.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A
January 2025
School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH9 3FE, United Kingdom.
The Red Planet is a magnetic planet. The Martian crust contains strong magnetization from a core dynamo that likely was active during the Noachian period when the surface may have been habitable. The evolution of the dynamo may have played a central role in the evolution of the early atmosphere and the planet's transition to the current cold and dry state.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWhere the microbes aren't.
FEMS Microbiol Rev
December 2024
UK Centre for Astrobiology, School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH93JZ, UK.
Although a large fraction of Earth's volume and most places beyond the planet lack life because physical and chemical conditions are too extreme, intriguing scientific questions are raised in many environments within or at the edges of life's niche space in which active life is absent. This review explores the environments in which active microorganisms do not occur. Within the known niche space for life, uninhabited, but habitable physical spaces potentially offer opportunities for hypothesis testing, such as using them as negative control environments to investigate the influence of life on planetary processes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInteractions between magma oceans and overlying atmospheres on young rocky planets leads to an evolving feedback of outgassing, greenhouse forcing, and mantle melt fraction. Previous studies have predominantly focused on the solidification of oxidized Earth-similar planets, but the diversity in mean density and irradiation observed in the low-mass exoplanet census motivate exploration of strongly varying geochemical scenarios. We aim to explore how variable redox properties alter the duration of magma ocean solidification, the equilibrium thermodynamic state, melt fraction of the mantle, and atmospheric composition.
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