Returned Samples: The Expectations and Implications

Details Returned Samples: The Expectations and Implications Returned Samples: The Expectations and Implications

Jul 2000

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2000came.work..206m&link_type=abstract

Concepts and Approaches for Mars Exploration, p. 206

Mathematics

Logic

Mars Sample Return Missions, Mars Missions, Mars (Planet), Mission Planning, Technology Utilization, Planetary Geology

Scientific paper

Before the exploration of Mars, the Apollo and Luna programs are the only example of a planetary investigation including a sample return. The context is somewhat different but the scientific logic to get the best knowledge of a planet from the available remote instruments or returned sample, is broadly similar. The purpose of the present paper is to illustrate some constrains of the geological exploration of a planet. Although there has been 30 years that the first moon samples were returned to the earth for study and that there will be around another ten years before the Mars sample return, there is still a number of measurement methods applied on lunar samples within terrestrial labs which have to day no equivalent counterpart in remote operated instruments. This does not mean that there was no progress but that despite the advances in automation and the power increase in computer process control, there are methods which require either large instruments because of the nature of physics or the presence of the human operator because of the complexity of the analytical procedures. This holds for a constant level of investigation capacity which of course is not the case as the evolution of laboratory instruments has also been tremendous over the last decades in mostly two directions: improvement of the potential of existing instruments and the introduction of new instrumentation concepts, e.g. atomic force microscope or Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (ICPMS). Adaptation of the instruments to unexpected properties, of the sample is also much faster and efficient for the scientific return when samples are already on Earth.

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