NASA Administrator Charles Bolden signed agreements with two European partners to advance Mars exploration and our journey to the Red Planet during meetings Tuesday at the Paris Air Show.
Bolden and Jean-Yves Le Gall, president of the French space agency, Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES), signed an agreement for France to provide the mast for the SuperCam component of NASA’s Mars 2020 rover.
In terms of design, SuperCam is similar to the ChemCam on the Curiosity rover, which is currently traversing the surface of Mars. ChemCam analyzes rocks and soil to determine their compositions and identify samples for analysis by other instruments onboard Curiosity. SuperCam, however, will have significantly enhanced capabilities, equipped with four scientific instruments that will allow it to look for biosignatures – indicators of the past presence of life -- and identify samples for collection and possible return to Earth.
“I’m delighted that our long time partners CNES will join us on the next step in our journey to Mars,” Bolden said, “We’re paving the way for humans to visit the Red Planet and working to answer one of the key questions for all humanity: has there ever been life elsewhere?”
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