The future of NASA's Mars programme is taking shape. The agency has narrowed — from eight to three — the list of potential landing sites for its 2020 rover, which will scoop up Martian rock and soil in the hope of one day returning them to Earth.
NASA shortlisted the sites on 10 February, at the end of a three-day workshop in Monrovia, California to hash out where the spacecraft will go. The final decision, due a year or two before launch, will be one of the most momentous in Mars exploration. The rocks that the Mars 2020 rover collects are likely to dictate the scientific questions that will be tested for decades to come.
“What if this is the only set of samples that we ever return from a known place on Mars?” asks Briony Horgan, a planetary scientist at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. Until now, the only Mars rocks that researchers have studied are meteorites, which reach Earth stripped of their original geological context.
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