The Conference on Life Detection in Extraterrestrial Samples is the kind of meeting that science fiction nerds dream of, a chance to sit in a room and methodically plan the logistics of what would be one of the most transformative discoveries of modern science. What kinds of samples would you pick up with a rover? What kind of evidence for life would be convincing? Oh yeah, and what exactly is “life” anyway?
I’m at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, looking out toward an idyllic palm-lined beach as surfers trot between the lab and the breakers, because, well, that’s what you do during your lunch break here. Inside the conference room, the few dozen scientists and engineers trade handshakes and inquire after family members before launching into a pointed critique of what went wrong in each other’s most recent scientific publications.
As the projector fires up, nervous fingers swipe at smartphones to check email: the 2013 budget is coming out today, and the word on the street is that planetary science won’t fare well. But the conference organizers – a veteran team representing NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) – concede nothing, noting that if you never really know when you’ll be put in the game, you’ve always got to be warming up.
Robotic missions to Mars have transformed our understanding of the Red Planet over the last decade, but even before the Mars Science Laboratory’s launch pad gets cold, scientists are planning for the next milestone: a Mars sample return mission. Of course, given the decade-plus timescale of interplanetary mission development and the vagaries of NASA funding, it’s best to start early.
A sample return mission would represent a leap forward in terms of both mission complexity and potential scientific reward. But where to begin? Dr. Andrew Steele, a Senior Staff Scientist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, sums up the challenges with a pithy riddle. “You have no idea what you’re looking for, you have no idea where to look for it, and you have no idea what to look for it with. But you want to find it.”
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