Dr. Jorge Vago | ExoMars Project Scientist | ESA-ESTEC

Search of life on Mars

The ExoMars Rosalind Franklin Rover Mission, led by ESA, is designed to search for signs of life on Mars. Scheduled for launch in 2028, the ExoMars rover will explore Oxia Planum, an ancient site interpreted to have significant potential for past habitability. Thanks to a unique set of instruments known as the Pasteur payload, the ExoMars science team will conduct a holistic search for traces of life and seek corroborating geological context information. Notably, this rover will be the first to feature a drill capable of collecting material from depths of up to 2 meters. This subsurface sampling capability is expected to significantly enhance the mission's ability to access chemical biosignatures, potentially enabling the detection of biomarkers that have remained preserved from degradation caused by cosmic radiation.

Dr. Kathryn M. Stack | M2020 Deputy Project Scientist  | Jet Propulsion Laboratory

The Mars 2020 Perseverance rover, NASA’s most recent flagship Mars rover mission, landed in Jezero crater in February 2021. Perseverance is seeking signs of ancient life on Mars and is the first step of a multi-mission effort to return samples from Mars back to Earth. During the first year of Perseverance’s mission, the rover explored a sequence of altered, igneous rocks on the Jezero crater floor, successfully collecting 8 rock samples and 1 atmospheric sample. Perseverance then embarked on a nearly two year-long exploration of an ancient river delta within the crater, collecting 10 sedimentary rock samples with high biosignature preservation potential and a pair of regolith samples. The rover is now traversing through the rocks exposed along the inner rim of the crater, which exhibit some of the highest carbonate signals on the surface of Mars. This talk will review highlights from the first three years of Perseverance’s mission to Mars and discuss implications for the Mars sample return effort.