Washington - The next robotic rover to explore Mars in 2020 should scour
the surface of the red planet more closely than ever for signs of past
life, a Nasa science team said on Tuesday.
The US space agency's
science definition team (SDT) released a 154-page document containing
its proposals for the next Mars rover, after five months of work.
The
mission would use microscopic analysis for the first time, collect the
first rock samples for possible return to Earth and test ways to use
natural resources on site for a future human trip, it said.
The
Mars 2020 mission would build on the work being done by Nasa's Curiosity
rover, which has been exploring the red planet since August 2012 and
has already found evidence of potentially habitable environments.
The
mission would present "a major step toward seeking signs of life," said
Jim Green, director of the Planetary Science Division at Nasa
headquarters.
TechnologyThe next step is for Nasa
to analyse the recommendations and issue a call for scientific
instruments, which could include higher resolution imaging devices,
microscopes, fine scale minerology, chemistry and organic carbon
detection tools to scan for biosignatures on the surface of Mars.
"To
combine this suite of instruments would be incredibly powerful," said
Jack Mustard, SDT chair and professor of geological sciences at Brown
University.
The rover would collect about 31 samples that might
someday be returned to Earth, representing "a legacy for understanding
the development of habitability on the planet", he told reporters.
The
US space agency has not yet devised the technology to bring the cache
back to Earth without disturbing its contents, and no plans have been
set for any potential sample-return.
The next Nasa mission to
Mars is a November launch of Maven, an orbiter that will study how Mars
interacted with the solar wind and lost its atmosphere.
The European Space Agency will follow in 2018 with its ExoMars rover.
John
Grunsfeld, NASA's associate administrator for science, said the 2020
Mars rover would get the US space agency to the next step in the "quest
to answer the grand questions," before a planned human mission in the
2030s.
"Do we see any evidence of past life in those habitable environments?" he said, alluding to the aims of the future missions.