The Scientific Importance of Returning Airfall Dust as a Part of Mars Sample Return (MSR)

Monica M. Grady* (Corresponding Author), Roger E. Summons, Timothy D Swindle, Frances Westall, Gerhard Kminek* (Corresponding Author), Michael A Meyer* (Corresponding Author), David W Beaty* (Corresponding Author), Brandi Lee Carrier* (Corresponding Author), Timothy Haltigin, Lindsay E Hays, Carl B. Agee, Henner Busemann, Barbara Cavalazzi, Charles S. Cockell, Vinciane Debaille, Daniel P. Glavin, Ernst Hauber, Aurore Hutzler, Bernard Marty, Francis M. McCubbinLisa M Pratt, Aaron B. Regberg, Alvin L Smith, Caroline L Smith, Kimberly T Tait, Nicholas J. Tosca, Arya Udry, Tomohiro Usui, Michael A. Velbel, Meenakshi Wadhwa, Maria-Paz Zorzano

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    7 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Dust transported in the martian atmosphere is of intrinsic scientific interest and has relevance for the planning of human missions in the future. The MSR Campaign, as currently designed, presents an important opportunity to return serendipitous, airfall dust. The tubes containing samples collected by the Perseverance rover would be placed in cache depots on the martian surface perhaps as early as 2023?24 for recovery by a subsequent mission no earlier than 2028?29, and possibly as late as 2030?31. Thus, the sample tube surfaces could passively collect dust for multiple years. This dust is deemed to be exceptionally valuable as it would inform our knowledge and understanding of Mars? global mineralogy, surface processes, surface-atmosphere interactions, and atmospheric circulation. Preliminary calculations suggest that the total mass of such dust on a full set of tubes could be as much as 100 mg and, therefore, sufficient for many types of laboratory analyses. Two planning steps would optimize our ability to take advantage of this opportunity: (1) the dust-covered sample tubes should be loaded into the Orbiting Sample container (OS) with minimal cleaning and (2) the capability to recover this dust early in the workflow within an MSR Sample Receiving Facility (SRF) would need to be established. A further opportunity to advance dust/atmospheric science using MSR, depending upon the design of the MSR Campaign elements, may lie with direct sampling and the return of airborne dust.
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)s176-s185
    Number of pages10
    JournalAstrobiology
    Volume22
    Issue numberS1
    Early online date19 May 2022
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2 Jun 2022

    Bibliographical note

    Acknowledgments
    The decision to implement Mars Sample Return will not be finalized until NASA’s completion of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process. This document is being made available for planning and information purposes only.

    Funding Information
    A portion of this work was funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). A portion of this work was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space
    Administration (80NM0018D0004).
    This work has partly (H. B.) been carried out within the framework of the NCCR PlanetS
    supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation. M.A.V’s participation in MSPG2 was
    supported in part by a sabbatical leave-of-absence from Michigan State University. M.-P.Z.
    was supported by projects PID2019-104205GB-C21 of Ministry of Science and Innovation
    and MDM-2017-0737 Unidad de Excelencia ‘Maria de Maeztu’- Centro de Astrobiología
    (CSIC-INTA) (Spain).

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