The mystery of how life on Earth originated , and whether it exists elsewhere in the universe, are “the raison d’être of space exploration”, said Louis Friedman, co-founder of the Planetary Society.
The answer, he wrote in The Washington Post, “might be in one of the test tubes now sitting on Mars“. But the samples, collected by Nasa’s Perseverance rover, “seem doomed to endlessly wait for no answer” – because Donald Trump is cancelling the mission to bring them home.
‘Crowning achievement’ of Mars exploration
Since Perseverance touched down on the Red Planet in February 2021, the “car-sized, nuclear-powered robot” has been gathering samples for delivery to Earth, where “close-up inspection” might provide “the first compelling evidence of life beyond Earth“, said Scientific American.
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This programme, a collaboration between Nasa and the European Space Agency known as Mars Sample Return (MSR), is the “crowning achievement” of half a century of Mars exploration, the product of decades of planning and “many billions of dollars”.
Unless, that is, “the Trump administration gets its way”. The US president’s recent “budgetary bombshell” proposed to cut Nasa’s funding by a quarter and “entirely eliminate MSR”, which the White House claimed was “grossly over-budget”. The samples, it said, would be collected by “human missions to Mars“. That is “nonsense on several levels”, said Scott Hubbard, Stanford University scientist and Nasa’s inaugural Mars program director. “I know of no credible ‘humans to Mars’ scenario that is earlier than 2039 or 2040.”
It’s true that “multiple independent reviews” of MSR have mentioned its “swelling price tag and slipping schedule”, said Scientific American. One 2023 Nasa review estimated that the project would cost up to $11 billion (£8 billion), comparable with the James Webb Space Telescope – the most expensive astronomy project in history. But “any remotely realistic plan for a crewed Mars mission would be far more expensive”.
Whether or not the European Space Agency can retrieve the MSR samples without Nasa is unclear, but a statement issued in response to Trump’s proposed budget “carefully emphasises the importance of US-European cooperation in space activities”.
‘Strong indications’ of life beyond Earth
Finding out whether the dozens of samples show evidence of life will require sophisticated equipment and “hundreds of chemical experiments”, said Friedman. But these samples have been “carefully selected in potentially habitable regions“; at least one has “strong indications of past microbial life“.
The answers to how life began could also “advance” fields like robotics, artificial intelligence, communications, synthetic biology, chemistry, and more. Which is why China and India are pursuing similar missions: China is planning to retrieve samples from Mars in 2028, which would make it “the first country to return potentially biologically active planetary material – including potential life forms – from beyond Earth”, said Space.com.
“By abandoning return of Mars samples to other nations, the US abandons the preeminent role that JFK ascribed to the scientific exploration of space” in his 1962 Rice University speech, said the 2023 Nasa independent review of the project. In his speech, entitled “We Choose to go to the Moon”, Kennedy said “We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people.”
