|
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 would be a very powerful type of exploration, because analysis is freed from the time, budget, and space constraints of spacecraft sensors.〔(Trieman, et al. - Groundbreaking Sample Return from Mars: The Next Giant Leap in Understanding the Red Planet )〕 Any of Earth's laboratories could potentially study a sample.〔 According to Louis Friedman, Executive Director of The Planetary Society, a Mars sample return mission is often described by the planetary science community as one of the most important 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 the highest priority Flagship Mission proposed for NASA by the ''Planetary Decadal Survey 2013-2022: The Future of Planetary Science''.〔(Solar System Exploration )〕 == Scientific value == The return of Mars samples would be beneficial to science by allowing more extensive analysis to be undertaken of the samples than could be done by instruments painstakingly transferred to Mars. Also, the presence of the samples on Earth would allow scientific equipment to be used on stored samples, even years and decades after the sample return mission.〔(Mars Sample Return ) (from the NASA website. Accessed 2008-05-26.)〕 In 2006, MEPAG identified 55 important future science investigations related to the exploration of Mars. In 2008, they concluded that about half of the investigations "could be addressed to one degree or another by MSR", making MSR "the single mission that would make the most progress towards the entire list" of investigations. Moreover, it was found that a significant fraction of the investigations cannot be meaningfully advanced without returned samples.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Mars sample return mission」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|