NASA Plans to Bring Bits of Mars to Earth. It May Change How We See Space

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The Wall Street Journal

Technology

4.4 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 12 May 2023

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

NASA’s Perseverance rover is currently collecting samples on the surface of Mars, and some of them will be coming to Earth—that is, if all goes well. NASA has a complex plan to bring bits of the Red Planet here, arriving in 2033, so scientists can study them to answer some burning questions. What’s the planet’s history? What is its dust like? And, are there any signs that life may have existed there? WSJ’s Alex Ossola speaks to Lindsay Hays, an astrobiologist at NASA and deputy lead scientist for the Mars Sample Return mission, about how this mission could help us better understand the history of our own planet and shape future missions to Mars and beyond. Further reading: NASA Lands Perseverance Rover Safely on Mars After ‘Seven Minutes of Terror’ NASA Collects Mars Rock Samples in Historic First for Perseverance Rover NASA’s Perseverance Rover Begins Its Search for Life on Mars Mars Photos: See NASA’s Perseverance Rover’s First Visions of Red Planet Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:31.0	The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC is full of things that
0:36.2	are objectively pretty cool.
0:38.9	It's got historic planes, really fast cars, and even an X-Wing Starfighter from the
0:43.5	2019 movie Star Wars, The Rise of Skywalker.
0:47.8	But the exhibit on exploring the moon has long been one of museum's most popular.
0:53.0	It was recently renovated, and the rooms are cavernous.
0:56.8	Others can see tiny spacecraft like the one's animals first rode into space.
1:01.3	You can see models of landers and even Neil Armstrong's actual space suit.
1:06.2	But the last room has a big table at its center.
1:09.6	Compared to the objects nearby, like a pair of moon boots and a vehicle astronauts drove
1:14.4	across the surface of the moon, the table doesn't really catch the eye.
1:18.5	But if you get closer, you can see that there's something really special in the table.
1:23.3	The pieces of protective glass are three rocks and what looks like some clumps of sand.
1:28.3	And unlike pretty much everything else in the exhibit, they didn't just go to the moon.
1:32.4	They're actually from the moon.
1:34.7	Laura Ellison, who is visiting from Houston, Texas, described one of the samples for me.
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