UK Hopes For ESA Mars Sample Center
The European Space Agency hopes to bring samples of rocks from Mars back to a facility in the UK by the 2020s.
The ESA’s science director told BBC News that the agency hopes to construct a facility specifically for testing extraterrestrial materials at Harwell in Oxfordshire.
Although the new center has been approved since October 2008, funds are not yet in order. But scientists hope the center will focus on robotics and climate change while also serving as a hub of analysis of extraterrestrial samples.
In July, ESA awarded SEA Group Ltd. with a contract to conceptualize what would be needed in regards to a bio-containment facility to ensure that the return of foreign materials did not pose a threat to astronauts, scientists or the Earth’s environment, while protecting the integrity of the samples themselves.
"One of the bids is the Harwell Centre. One of its areas of expertise is likely to be associated with curation – how to handle samples," David Southwood, ESA’s science director, told the BBC.
The Mars Sample Return project is slated to launch by 2020. It is a joint mission between the ESA and NASA.
Southwood told BBC that the US and possibly Russia would be likely partners in Europe’s ExoMars rover mission that will seek out signs of life on the Red Planet.
“We are more or less certain that on ExoMars, Europe and the US will be leading partners, probably with Russian involvement. It’s a first step to the international exploration of Mars," said Southwood.
On Wednesday, officials announced the formation of the UK Cosmochemical Analysis Network, or UK CAN, during the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science at the University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield.
Chaired by Monica Grady, UK CAN will provide its members with access to facilities needed to study extraterrestrial materials in future missions.
"We currently have access to extraterrestrial material in the form of meteorites, lunar rocks, as well as particles from the solar wind, interplanetary space and the tails of comets collected by space missions like Genesis and Stardust,” said Grady, a professor in Planetary Sciences at the Open University.
“Analyzing and comparing the chemical-make up of these samples gives us all sorts of information about the formation and evolution of planetary systems and the relationship between life and its planetary habitat."
UK CAN is the result of a three-year collaboration between the Open University, the University of Manchester, Imperial College and the Natural History Museum in London.
The center will use the X-ray diffraction microscope at the Natural History Museum to map the distribution of minerals in meteorites. The Open University’s mass spectrometer will be used for high spatial resolution analysis of the chemical and isotopic composition of samples. The University of Manchester’s double mass spectrometer will study the structure of large organic molecules.
The project is funded by the four institutions as well as the UK’s Science and Technology Facilities Council.
"Sample return is a major part of the Solar System exploration strategy for us in the UK, as well as for the European Space Agency and the International space community,” said Grady.
“UK CAN will bring together the expertise that we have already built up in the UK and allow us to develop the infrastructure and skills to deal with the challenges of future missions, such as samples returned from the surface of Mars.”
Grady added that the UK CAN facility will also serve as a training base for scientists by equipping them with transferable skills and techniques.
“Even if they go on to have careers outside academia, they will carry forward the technological competencies that they have developed into the workforce," she said.
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Image 1: Artist’s impression of the ExoMars rover drilling into the Martian surface. ESA
Image 2: A thin slice (less than 30 microns thick) from a primitive meteorite, showing a chondrule, one of the building blocks of planets. The width of the image is 2mm. [ More Images ]
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