page_title: Sample-return mission
section_title: Scientific use
hierarchical_section_title: Sample-return mission / Scientific use
caption_attribution_description: English: Mars Meteorite - NWA 7034 http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mars/news/mars20130103.html Designated Northwest Africa (NWA) 7034, and nicknamed "Black Beauty," the Martian meteorite weighs approximately 11 ounces (320 grams). Credit: NASA
context_page_description: A sample-return mission is a spacecraft mission with the goal of collecting and returning samples from an extraterrestrial location to Earth for analysis. Sample-return missions may bring back merely atoms and molecules or a deposit of complex compounds such as loose material and rocks. These samples may be obtained in a number of ways, such as soil and rock excavation or a collector array used for capturing particles of solar wind or cometary debris.
  To date, samples of Moon rock from Earth's Moon have been collected by robotic and crewed missions, the comet Wild 2 and the asteroid 25143 Itokawa have been visited by a robotic spacecraft which returned samples to Earth, and samples of the solar wind have been returned by the robotic Genesis mission. Samples from the asteroid 162173 Ryugu have been obtained and are in transit back to Earth.
  In addition to sample-return missions, samples from three identified non-terrestrial bodies have been collected by means other than sample-return missions: samples from the Moon in the form of Lunar meteorites, samples from Mars in the form of Martian meteorites, and samples from Vesta in the form of HED meteorites.
context_section_description: Samples available on Earth can be analyzed in laboratories, so we can further our understanding and knowledge as part of the discovery and exploration of the Solar System. Until now, many important scientific discoveries about the Solar System were made remotely with telescopes, and some Solar System bodies were visited by orbiting or even landing spacecraft with instruments capable of remote sensing or sample analysis. While such an investigation of the Solar System is technically easier than a sample-return mission, the scientific tools available on Earth to study such samples are far more advanced and diverse than those that can go on spacecraft. Further, analysis of samples on Earth allows follow up of any findings with different tools, including tools that can tell intrinsic extraterrestrial material from terrestrial contamination , and those that have yet to be developed; in contrast, a spacecraft can carry only a limited set of analytic tools, and these have to be chosen and built long before launch.
  Samples analyzed on Earth can be matched against findings of remote sensing for more insight into the processes that formed the Solar System. This was done, for example, with findings by the Dawn spacecraft, which visited the asteroid Vesta from 2011 to 2012 for imaging, and samples from HED meteorites (collected on Earth until then), which were compared to data gathered by Dawn. These meteorites could then be identified as material ejected from the large impact crater Rheasilvia on Vesta. This allowed deducing the composition of crust, mantle and core of Vesta. Similarly, some differences in composition of asteroids (and, to a lesser extent, different compositions of comets) can be discerned by imaging alone. However, for a more precise inventory of the material on these different bodies, more samples will be collected and returned in the future, to match their compositions with the data gathered through telescopes and astronomical spectroscopy.
  One further focus of such investigation—besides the basic composition and geologic history of the various Solar System bodies—is the presence of the building blocks of life on comets, asteroids, Mars or the moons of the gas giants. Several sample-return missions to asteroids and comets are currently in the works. More samples from asteroids and comets will help determine whether life formed in space and was carried to Earth by meteorites. Another question under investigation is whether extraterrestrial life formed on other Solar System bodies like Mars or on the moons of the gas giants, and whether life might even exist there. The result of NASA's last "Decadal Survey" was to prioritize a Mars sample-return mission, as Mars has a special importance: it is comparatively "nearby", might have harbored life in the past, and might even continue to sustain life. Jupiter's moon Europa is another important focus in the search for life in the Solar System. However, due to the distance and other constraints, Europa might not be the target of a sample-return mission in the foreseeable future.
caption: Another meteorite thought to be from ancient Mars
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