I'm John Bachelors, my colleague and co-host and co-pilot David Livingston, Dr.

Space of the Space Show and we're very, very privileged to be speaking to Dr Kevin Hand of the

JPL who is a director at Ocean Worlds Lab, but in addition to that he's the

P.I. on Sherlock, that's on board perseverance the rover that has come up with leopard spots is

the colloquial way of talking about the suggestion of life existing in the

first billion years of Mars.

However, we now give him an unlimited budget.

Kevin, you've spoken often of when we get the rocks back.

11 billion, a mere bag of shells.

We give you a much bigger number. What do you want to know, David, Kevin?

And by the way, it's okay to say that you want to go there as opposed to bring the rocks here.

What do you want? What do you want, what do you want, Kevin?

Well, that's a great question and then thanks for the open pocketbook.

First I'll say that we really hope that we can get that number down for more sample return.

There are a number of studies that are underway and that will be started later this year and

next year to see how to get that number down for Mars sample return. But in an unlimited

budget scenario I would love to get more robots to Mars to study ancient Mars, but also to study some of the icy

regions on Mars and regions where we have some indication of contemporary or modern day geologic activity.

These gully features on Mars.

There are a number of, there are the ice caps on Mars.

There are a number of craters that have got ice in them.

I'd love to land a rover next to one of those and roll up to the side of a Martian glacier and look for life.

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