NASA isn’t the only space agency with a hunger for the Red Planet. The European Space Agency would also like to snatch samples from Mars, and now they’re making their own plans for a mission that will bring back priceless pieces of our neighboring planet.
ESA’s plans will certainly work in cooperation with NASA’s, and in fact NASA’s upcoming Mars 2020 mission, slated to launch next summer, would do the actual sample acquisition. But after that, both agency’s plans are still under construction. Sometime in the 2020s, the agencies hope to gather the bits of rock, dirt, and air that the Mars 2020 rover collects, and bring it all back to Earth to study up close.
NASA and ESA plan to work together in a multi-launch plan to return samples from the Red Planet. (Credit: ESA/K. Oldenburg)
ESA/K. Oldenburg
ESA’s current proposal involves two more launches after Mars 2020. The ...
